Night Rider - Part I, Being Seen
Sep 29 '01
The Bottom Line See and be Seen
E Aloha kakou (Hi everybody!) - It's that newbie, Hula Rider again.
A little bit about my riding - I may have a somewhat different perspective than some other folks because my bike is not recreational. I don't own an automobile, so my motorcycle is my primary transportation, and my bicycle is my recreational vehicle. I use my moto to make client calls, commute, shop, etc. I ride an average of 75 miles per day in all kinds of weather and over every kind of surface. If I'm going to make it to work, I don't have the luxury of deciding that today is not a riding day. I just have to figure out how to make myself and my bike get through it.
I just realized I don't see much about riding at night here, and since half the riding I do is at night, I thought I'd pass on some things I have learned. There is a lot of overlap between night riding on the highway and town night riding, but there are some special things for the different situations. Night Rider Part II will be in the city riding secion.
The first and most obvious thing about riding highways at night is that it is DARK out there! (Duh! Of course it's dark - so?)
Well, that means that whether you are on a little 450 Nighthawk like mine, or on a full dresser, NO ONE CAN SEE YOU! Motorcycles just are not very visible at night or at dusk. We disappear right into the scenery. Out on the highway, our itty bitty headlamps look like a reflection of moonlight or the car's own lights twinkling off a road sign, fencepost, or a leaf.
The way to combat this is CONSPICUITY. I know it's a lot more cool to be running through the night in black leathers and bandana, a black banshee cutting through the air on wings of thunder. Personally, my daughter and grandson, not to mention myself, would prefer me to be a live nerd rather than a dead babe.
Assuming you have developed and are continuing to develop your riding skills, CONSPICUITY (that basically means in-your-face visibility) is THE way to stay alive.
To achieve this, you can have active conspicuity (lights) and passive conspicuity (reflective stuff).
Active conspicuity - Lights: Keep them clean. A dirty headlamp can lose over half it's ability to show you the road ahead - which also means that other people are half as likely to see you. Dirty turn signals reduce the ability of people to know what you will be doing next.
Also - check the angle adjustment of your lights. That's a big heavy chunk of glass supported by a couple of relatively small bolts. Over time and vibration (which motorcycles sure produce a lot of) the lamp slowly droops lower and lower. Just a degree or two of drop can reduce your lit road by a lot of feet. (Remember SIPDE? Well - you can't SCAN if you can't SEE!) If you don't know the proper set-up for your bike, get a good mechanic (the guys who do safety checks are good at this) to show you how.
If you have to do a lot of driving in rain and fog, consider investing in a set of halogen lights. Whatever lets you see farther also increases your conspicuity.
Check the angles on your turn signals, too. kids (and really big old kids) LOVE motorcycles. When your precious darling is sitting defenseless in some parking lot, sometimes kids will play with it, "readjusting" the mirrors and turn signals. Also, again - cars just don't see bikes, and if you have extended signals like mine, they will get tapped by folks pulling in and out of their spaces (I LOVE stores with separate bike parking).
Passive Conspicuity - reflective stuff:
There are all kinds of passive conspicuity devices. Let's start at the top and work down.
You can start with a white helmet. I bought a black one because I like the way it looks. Now I wish I had a white helmet. The black one gets REALLY HOT inside under our tropical sun, and at night it completely disappears. If you don't have a white helmet (or even if you do), get:
The Halo - this is a BIG rubberband-like device that is coated on one side with a retroreflective material. You put the "rubberband" around the lower edge of your helmet. If you don't wear a helmet, I guess you could use it for a headband, or sew it to a jacket. In the daytime it is an uninspired grey. At night, when someone's headlights hit it, it looks like a spotlight shining back. I'm even telling all my bicycling friends to buy these at the local moto-shop. Now my bicycle friends are stretching Halos over their backpacks as well as their helmets.
OK, next: Your jacket. Your back is probably the biggest single flat surface on your bike. And it is ideally located for conspicuity - It is approximately at a car driver's eye level. Use that surface. If you can't afford one of those spiffy high-tech jackets with the retroreflective designs (I sure can't), get an inexpensive net vest with retroreflectivie stripes. These vests pull on over your jacket when you need them and roll up into a tight little easily-stowed package when you don't.
If you have a passenger, put the vest on the passenger.
A little lower (unlesss you have a really high sissy bar) is your luggage. I took mine down to the local auto parts store and bought a package of red reflectors and attached them to the back of the luggage. Now my bike's back end looks like it has five tail lights. I also put reflective tape on the luggage rack. It's a silvery grey in the day time, not really noticable, and GLOWS in headlights at night.
Sides - folks coming out of side roads are looking for tractor-trailers, not motorcycles. They don't seem to see that little oval of light coming toward them. It's nice and probably helps to have the reflectors on the lower portion of the fork, but I suspect they are often so small they are not that noticeable. But your LEGS are BIG. Reflective stripes down your legs are actually much more visible to that guy pulling out than your headlamp is. Again, I can't afford the spiffy high-tech suits. But I can afford screaming yellow rain pants and a couple of rolls of reflective tape. They just pull right on over my leathers. True, they are not designed for motorcycles, and will rip out eventually. But at $13 for the jacket and pants, they last me a few months. The nice gear runs $500 and up.
I invested under $100 in conspicuity items for myself and my bike. At night, from the rear, my bike now appears three times wider than before. This is a good thing.
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Epinions.com ID:
hularider
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Member: Leilehua Yuen
Location: Hilo, Hawaii, USA
Reviews written: 69
Trusted by: 8 members
About Me:
HulaRider is an author, artist, and educator who specializes in Hawaiian culture and arts.
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