Tips for riding at night?

[kurth83]

Shall we go into the light triangle thing here?

Seeing and being seen are both important to riding at night. I am going to focus on beeing seen here.

A single headlight does not allow you to be seen easily in traffic, neither does it give much depth perception queues to sleeping cagers. A single light is hard to pick out in traffic and it is easy to blend in with the vehicle behind you by appearing to be one of their two headlights.

I have personally experienced this, standing at an intersection (as a pedestrian) and being surprised to see a (single headlight) motorcycle as the first vehicle in traffic when the light turned green. I was staring right at them, 50 ft away, and could not tell there was a bike there. This has happened to me more than once and I am more attentive the the presence of motos than the average cager.

Extra lights greatly add to the average cagers ability to pick you out as a separate vehicle, and to judge your relative speed and distance.

This works for both front and rear lights. With a single headlight, you tend to blend in with the car behind you and get cut off in city traffic. With a single taillight, you tend to blend in with the car in front of you and get rear-ended.

Adding two extra lights up front to make the infamous light triangle is pretty popular around here, but I am the only one I know who also has extra lights in back that doesn't ride a large touring bike (they often come with extra lights in back built into the hard luggage).

 

[Yougoteck]

Don't think anyone has mentioned how fast the temperature drops relatiev to your your body. So I wear warm clothing if planning to ride at night. It greatly improves your reaction time, and it's just waaayy more comfortable. Being cold can drastically affect your riding ability

 

[iehawk]

Why would you be in the twisties at night? Is this part of your commuter? If this is just for fun, I would advise against it. Maybe go once or twice to satisfy your curiosity, but that's it.

I've been to Duarte's Tavern for dinner and had to ride back at 9pm on 84. That was downright dark/scary. The thing is as you lean, inside the corner becomes darker since your headlight dip due to the lean angle... meaning you can only see even shorter distance (as you've probably experienced). A brighter light won't help in this case, you just end up with a brighter light on a shorter distance.

You can raise your low-beam a bit and get away with it if it's just a little bit, not too high. that it would be close to the high beam level. The high-beam can work too, but it's usually too narrow to provide enough peripheral coverage. By the way, too high, you will use luminosity hitting the ground too far (less bright).

Consider an aux light that's aimed in between the low and high beam. You might even be able to go with just one instead a pair. Pick one with a wider beam pattern and also farther, so you can use when there's no incoming traffic (when there is, refer to Yana's advice).

I commute at night as well, since I work night shift (6pm-3am, rain/shine), but my commute is pretty much freeways and main roads. My solution is an HID low-beam aimed a bit higher to provide a bit better forward and peripheral coverage (there are several threads on this pros and cons you can search here). So far so good, it works great and I have yet to get high beamed by incoming traffic (good reflector might be a contributing factor).

High-viz marks... yes, on your jacket for sure, pants if possible. You can also buy retro-reflective stickers that match the bike's color, so they blend with the bike during the daytime, but will glow at night.

You're on a red-light or stop sign, flash your brakelight a few times when you see someone coming behind you and be prepare to move out of their way just in case. If you are turning, use the turn signal a bit earlier on the approach.

Cold nights... wind chill factor will affect you more as you go faster. Bring a sweater or a couple layers, a magazine/newspaper placed on the chest behind the jacket can help. Get all-weather gloves and carry them in case it gets cold. Option: heated vest, battery/plug-in. This thing is great! It's like wearing multiple layers that go on/off with a flick of a switch.

Remember, you see less and others too. This includes debris and road conditions, you may not spot them until you're much closer to them which may be too late. Have an even more room for errors.

PS. that BMW K1600GT's HID light kicks ass. It will even go as tight as an on-ramp. I got to play around with one late last year.

 

[slydrite]

My MSF instructor said, don't ride faster than your lights show you. His tip, get brighter lights

LOL - that was me. SF or SSF?