Fred, your opinion is based upon false premises. I will attempt to educated you politely why this is so.
Yes, fire trucks and other first responder vehicles use modulation lights. This brings about confusion with Mr. average driver that thinks you are a first responder and while getting out of your way sometimes, other times panics and does dumb things. Talk to any first responder and they have story after story about people doing stupid and unpredictable things in front of them. Also, people "don't see" them all the time.
You believe they didn't look. That is false. This is a key issue for you to understand. Many, if not most, did look, but you didn't fit what their expectations were. They expect to see another car or truck, not a motorcycle or emergency vehicle even. Their conscious mind never even took notice of you,
their subconscious mind did see you, and immediately ignored you, because you were not a threat to them. I can't find the study, it pre-dated the internet, but in the early '80s CalTrans did a study where they got 20 drivers involved in car/motorcycle accidents to participate. They questioned them about the accident and all of the car drivers said the same thing: "I didn't see the motorcycle". They they went under hypnosis... Under hypnosis 100% of the drivers remembered seeing the motorcycle and could even give accurate descriptions of the bike and rider, but dismissed the motorcycle because they did not feel threatened by it, or because they believed it to be farther away and not a threat in that regard.
They study concluded that car drivers, surrounded by a steel cage, felt they were not at risk of injury when a motorcycle/car interaction might occur. And that they have difficulty determining the distance of an on-coming motorcycle due to it's smaller size, their brain interpreting it as a car farther away. They also mentioned in the study that high beam use further complicated the problem as bright lights only made it more difficult for the car driver to judge distance of on-coming vehicles, in part because they were less able to determine what kind of vehicle it was. This all occurred in a split second before the conscious mind would take notice of the motorcycle.
The study also concluded that many of the participants never consciously took notice of the motorcycle, as their subconscious mind already dismissed it. That only education and familiarization with motorcycles as traffic they should expect would help to bring into their awareness. This study brought about California's billboard program to "See Motorcycles".
The reason I'm familiar with this study is that I was in the Marines at the time and the on base motorcycle class that was required discussed this study in length.
You said:
and he had obviously seen my flashing light after the fact
and I believe that was true. However,
after the fact does no good. He would have needed to see you before for it to make a difference, but his brain is not wired that way and motorcycles don't register to him.
Do people lie? Absolutely! Will that help you stay alive because you realize that? Not one bit.
Turn off your modulator, never touch your horn and learn to ride with the concept that staying out of the stupid people's path and maneuvering around them is going to keep you alive. It's your job to see them, well ahead of when your paths cross, and avoid them. Predicting poor behavior that is dangerous to you is required and that requires looking much further ahead than you appear to be doing now. That you actually use your screaming banshee tells me you didn't notice the problem in time to avoid it, or you saw it, but did not react to it, instead relying upon the horn.
Cameras? Wow, that's awesome for proving why someone crashed into you. Rather better to not have the problem in the first place, don't you think? I don't have any issues with you running cameras, but do you do it so you can capture evidence? Or for other reasons? If the former, you appear to expect to be in these situations. That tells me you are not predicting them and altering your riding behavior/speed/location to avoid them
before they are a situation.
I ride all over the US. About 30-40k a year in all kinds of weather and traffic. Do I see drivers doing dumb stuff that could threaten me? Sure, every day. But I see that before it's a situation and stay away from them, avoiding issues by looking farther ahead and predicting the bad drivers by observing their behavior. I see that car at the cross street and take note of what they are doing, where their wheels are pointed and where they are looking, if the car is inching forward, etc. and can pretty reliably tell if they present a threat to me, then I react accordingly. Maybe that's just covering the brakes, maybe it's changing lanes or maybe it's even flashing my high beam/aux lights.
You're about to think "AHA, he uses his high beams too!" Yes, but in a far more effective manner than a modulator. And I'm going to tell you why. Modulators are a steady rhythm of pulsing light. The human brain is wired to
notice change. The modulator or someone running high beams all the time is not
change. Me seeing them looking and not seeing me, and responding with a flash of my high beams is a
change that gets more attention than anything that is a constant feature to them.
I see the stupid people long before I have to make a sudden response to their behavior. Because of that, I don't have scary moments or near misses. I don't need to confront other road users and threaten them with camera footage, etc. I have learned to see 'tells' of bad drivers from a long ways off. One of my favorites is the sun visor down when they don't have the sun in their eyes. This is a 100% reliable predictor of a bad/inattentive driver. Just like the weaving texters and drunks that can't stay in their lane or at normal speed of traffic flow.
Yes, modulators are DOT legal. No, you shouldn't use one. It makes it more difficult for other road users to judge your distance from them, annoys all the people in front of you that see you anyway and confuses a surprisingly large number of road users that simply don't know what it is or means and how they should respond.
I don't expect to sway you. But I would ask that you take a moment to consider the points I have outlined and consider your riding style and methods. Ask yourself how far ahead are you really looking? And consider that you may not be looking as far ahead as you should be to avoid these issues that you believe the modulator helps you with. You say no one has pulled out in front of you except those that didn't look. Did you see and avoid those that didn't look? Or did you have confrontations and near misses with them because you didn't realize they didn't look? If you're having near misses, it's because you are not looking far enough ahead and predicting potentially bad behavior before you get to that spot, (and altering your behavior to avoid it).
Stop relying on the modulator and your cameras. You can be lit up like the sun, wearing dayglow riding gear and the brightest colors not found in nature, and people will still "not see you" because they are not looking for you. This is why so many people pull out in front of fire trucks and are oblivious to first responder vehicles. My LEO friends tell me that they will run the Wig/Wag headlights instead of their overhead 'codes' (blue/red strobing lights), because too many people either "don't see" or react badly to the codes, often simply not getting out of the way when they need to get past them to respond to an incident.