Wilsons Sandbox

Thanks for the link. The craziest are the Harley or similar riders wearing black non-DOT half helmets, riding an all black motorcycle, and wearing all black clothing. Black might be fashionable but it is totally lame for safety. The Top 10 High-Viz Tips These 10 strategies will be most effective at helping you get noticed by other drivers. Tips 11 through 20 (10 More High-Viz Tips) are additional ways to make yourself visible to other drivers. Each tip is assigned a point value. The more points a tip has, the more effective it will be at increasing your conspicuity. Your goal is to use the tips and add up points to be a perfect "10." Take a look at the Top 10 tips, decide which ones make the most sense to you, based on your riding experience and the type of riding you do, and adopt them into your riding style. To get an idea of how visible you are right now on the scale of 1-10, try our interactive quiz to see where you stand. The quiz will give you a place to start; then you can keep adding tips to your riding strategy until you reach 10. 1. Fluorescent/Reflective Safety Vest 4 Points Cost: $10-100 High-Viz is the New Black The most effective tool that a rider can use to increase visibility is a simple, reflective safety vest. The fluorescent color and retroreflective taping are hard to miss, both day and night. If you're serious about standing out in traffic, a vest will net you the most visibility with the least amount of effort. Read more.... 2. White Helmet 3 points Cost: $80-500 If You're Going to Wear a Helmet, Make It A White One Another solid tool for making yourself visible to others is to wear a white helmet. A recent study in New Zealand [LINK] found that riders who wore a white helmet were 24 percent less likely to be involved in a multi-vehicle crash than riders who wore a black helmet. Read more.... 3. Brightly Colored Jacket 2 points Cost: $100-500 Show Your True Colors For a rider's protection and visibility, a good jacket in a bright color such as red, orange, green, or yellow is a very smart choice. A fluorescent color is even better, and if it has reflective material, you'll be much, much easier to see in traffic both day and night. Read more.... 4. Strategic Lane Positioning 2 points Cost: $0 High-Viz Strategy: Location, Location, Location If you choose not to wear brightly colored riding gear, or if you already do wear the gear and are looking for more ways to stand out in traffic, careful positioning in traffic will do as much for your visibility as a high-viz jacket. Motorcycles can disappear in traffic because they're smaller and harder to spot among other, larger vehicles. Whether you wear brightly colored gear or not, smart positioning is critical in making your presence known to other drivers. Understanding blind spots, commercial vehicles, following distance, positioning for intersections, and positioning for merge areas are the keys to proper positioning. Read more.... 5. Headlight Modulation 1 point Cost: $50-150 Stand Out from the Crowd An easy motorcycle modification to boost your frontal visibility the area from 11:00 to 1:00 where most of your accident hazards come from is to add a headlight modulator to your bike. A headlight modulator "pulses" the headlight's intensity during the daytime, rapidly alternating between high and low to draw attention to the motorcycle. Read more.... 6. Flash Your Taillight 1 point Cost: $0 Use Your Stop Lamp to Your Advantage An easy way to make yourself more visible to traffic from the rear is to flash your taillight. Instead of just braking to slow or to stop, squeeze the brake lever several times to alert other drivers before you begin to slow. This will raise awareness of both your presence and your intentions and allow other drivers time to adjust. Read more.... 7. Reflective Materials 1 point Cost: $5-75 Glow in the Dark Here is a great tip anyone who rides after dark: a cheap, easy, and fun way to dramatically increase your visibility is to use reflective materials on your helmet and/or bike to stand out at night. You can buy pre-designed kits with skulls, flames, or other designs, or you can create your own custom set for your helmet or bike. Read more.... 8. Movement 1 point Cost: $0 Use Motion to Stand Out A moving object is more likely to draw another driver's attention than a stationary one. But when you're riding towards or away from another driver, because you stay in the same general place in their field of vision, you may eventually "disappear" from view, even though you are in plain sight. Read more.... 9. Auxiliary Driving Lights 1 point Cost: $150-300 A Different Twist on Headlights Most riders add auxiliary driving lights or fog lights to their motorcycle to help them see the road and shoulders at night or in bad weather. But a terrific fringe benefit is that auxiliary lights can make you more noticeable to other drivers. The relatively unique triangular light setup is very rare (except near railroad tracks!) and may help get you noticed. I RIDE WITH MY BRIGHTER THAN STOCK HEADLIGHT ON HIGH BEAM MOST OF THE TIME. 10. Hand Signals 1 point Cost: $0 Discover the Lost Art One simple, cheap way to make yourself more visible to other drivers is to use hand signals in addition to your bike's turn signals. Because traditional hand signals are so rare in traffic, they tend to get noticed by other drivers. Read more....