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TechNote #4 - 4/15/2008 - Cover Your A**

While the majority of motorcycle-car collisions involve bikes running into cars (as discussed in my January tech note), a close second is cars hitting the back of a motorcycle. Frequently these accidents occur when a bike is stopped at a red light, stop sign, or making a left turn and the car behind doesn't notice that the bike has stopped.

What can you do to make yourself more visible to vehicles behind you? Just like the front of the bike, you need to be conspicuous. Here are our suggestions:

Additional Rear Lighting

Most motorcycles have just one puny taillight bulb in the back of the bike, which often doubles as the brake light. Even big touring bikes like Gold Wings and Ultras don't have a lot of stock lighting. There are several solutions that can enhance the visibility of your rear-end.

Hyper-Lites are stick-on LED modules that can be placed on just about any flat surface. Available in brake-light only or running/brake combinations, they wire up to most bikes easily and draw very little power. Also available in a "3-way" version that incorporates additional turn signal lighting. The brake light is modulated (see below) on most Hyper-Lites products.

BackOFF license plate frames have LED's built into the frame. The LED's are dual-intensity, designed to work as both running and brake lights. Modulation is not built into the BackOFF frames but can be added through a separate box. Available in Black or Chrome, some versions also add turn signal lighting.

Kisan's VectraLIGHTS are available as a license plate frame, or as separate LED modules designed to fit under fairing-mounted mirrors. VectraLIGHTS add running lights, turn signals, and modulated brake lights.

Reflective Material

At night, your motorcycle can disappear into a sea of taillights on a busy road. You can improve your odds of being seen by adding reflective material to the back of the bike, and to your helmet. This material appears black during the day (silver also available for helmets), but at night headlight beams will reflect as bright white. We have pre-cut kits for several bikes (BMW's mostly) but also have 8" x 10" sheets that you can cut to fit with scissors. Helmet kits in checkerboard or diamond patterns include enough pieces to share between a couple of helmets.

Modulating Brake Lights

Instead of the brake light just being brighter than the running light, modulators turn your brake lights into real attention-grabbers. Some add-on brake lights listed above (Hyper-Lites and VectraLIGHTS) have built-in modulation. We also have some add-on products that you can use on the factory brake light or added lights:

Kisan TailBlazer - for many bikes, this is a plug-and-play solution that is as simple as replacing a brake light bulb. The Kisan bulb/modulator fits into the original socket, and contains the flasher circuitry as well as a small, super-bright halogen bulb. The bulb portion is replaceable separately, so you don't have to buy a whole new modulator when the bulb burns out. Splice-in versions are also available. For BMW K1200LT or Honda Gold Wing riders with the optional LED light bar on the trunk, Kisan makes a special TailBlazer just for those light bars. Having the brake light up high, and flashing, makes you about as visible as you're going to get.

BackOFF also has a modulator, which can be wired into their license plate frames or can be used on many bikes' factory lights. It's fairly simple to install but does require splicing into factory wiring.

Of course, in addition to all of the above - wear conspicuous clothing, ride defensively, watch your mirrors, and be sure to give your brake lever or pedal a tap when slowing down to alert vehicles behind you.

Until next time, stay safe!

TechNotes are occasional articles that we write to help people identify products and solutions that will work well for them, or for other technical subjects. If you have a suggestion for a future TechNote topic, please let me know.