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NIGHT RIDING

On the roads, I generally feel pretty safe at night. My headlight and side markers are easier to notice because of the contrast against the darkness. I find that people seem to wait it out if they want to cross in front of me because they're competely unsure of the distance and closing speed between us.

It's during the day where I believe people see past me instead of seeing me. And that is evidenced by how drivers at intersections keep creeping past the lines and the front end bounces from slamming the brakes. I think most drivers only tend to briefly notice shapes overall instead of actually identifying what that shape is.

Off-road, I loved night riding. I would go to SHNF every night there was one of those stupid singing shows on TV. Easily 10 degrees cooler and the Cyclops Motorsports dual HID helmet lights combined with a headlight was like carrying the sun with me, throwing shadows and contrast for whoops, chop and tree limbs and vines trying to rip me off the the back of the bike. Still happened every now and then. But I usually rode just as fast or faster at night because of the contrast. It's the diffused daylight and dark/light transitions that made it difficult to focus and differentiate.
 
I try to avoid riding at night time. Love doing it with my car but all of the animals (deer, racoons, cats and drunks) out there scare me. :lol2::zen:
 
Despite how fun it is to ride at night, think back to the motorcycle safety guru, Larry Grodsky or something like that from rider magazine. Trying to slide into town a little after dark. I love taking off early in the morning, an hour or two before daylight to get a headstart on the 550 mile run to Big Bend. Beat the traffic out of town. Nightime riding in Texas just scares me to death though. There is a reason all these farmers have cattle guards on their trucks and it ain't cattle.
 
Big interstates are okay. Rural, especially 2-lanes, absolutely not. I did an overnight run coming back from the Hill Country one time. Flicked on the dual high beams on the Trophy SE, and it was eerily horrifying how many reflected eyeballs populated either side of the road.

That and the drunks.
 
I use to prefer to ride at night had all the bikes setup with aux lighting . Less traffic and cooler weathers great. But my night vision is not what it use to be so I mostly ride during the day.
 
night riding on my adv bike
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night riding on my dirtbike
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which do you think is more scary ? :lol2:
 
It's dark in the mornings when I ride to work. No big deal with the KLR, but the Harley has "DayMaker" headlights and about every third or forth car flashes their brights at me. It's a first world problem!! (no issues when I ride either Honda)
 
I went for a dusk ride the other night that lasted until after dark- around the flat grass farm roads in my area- the bugs, oh the bugs.

By the time I was on the way home I had a choice to make- not see through visor very well due to the massacre that had occurred with high speed runs , or crack it open and risk a bug in the eye. I slowed down and tip toed home.

I'd need tear offs if I was gonna do that on the regular.
 
A few years back i rode to see some friends in stonewall. At 11:30 i headed to my cabin rental 15 miles south of Fredericksburg that 22 mile ride was the scariest ride of my life. It was late january and slightly foggy. I gave up counting at 200 deer. White tail and fallow in groups of 15 plus crossing in front of you and a couple standing on the side of the road every 1/4 mile. I never hit 35 mph.
Here in ellis co i trapped 4,500 pigs between 2002 and 2010 out of 30 live traps. I dont enjoy riding at night here at all.
I ain’t skeered of no deer

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I don't like it but I've done it a lot. I used to commute 45 miles to and from work and for much of the year it was dark going both ways. Yay for 12+ hour shifts....

Good lights are your friend and very few motorcycles come with good, much less great, headlights. I had HID's in both headlights of my 1150 and the "top of the line" ADV Monster lights to fill in the ditches closer to me when I was commuting. I can't really recommend cheap lights like the ADV Monster ones (no longer in business) unless you just want to be seen. They're good for that but not for throwing light way out yonder.

Even really good lights are cheap relative to a hospital bill but if I was still having to do it a lot I'd invest in a Flir camera. I almost bought the latter more than once when I was commuting all the time.

Currently, I'm running Baja Designs S2 lights and a Skene Dimmer on the CB500X. They're pretty good on the little honda (it doesn't go that fast) and they don't draw much electricity. They're also 10x better than the ADV Monster lights ever thought about being. On single lane goat paths at night the headlights are not my limiting factor and on open road I can see plenty far and wide with them at reasonable speeds.

I want to put a pair of Squadron Pros on the FJR soon and control them through a Nuetrino fuse box thing. Clearwater lights are also popular for serious night riding and I much prefer their dimmer design to other ones on the market. You get the lights bright enough and you can blind yourself with street signs and the like in some situations so being able to turn them down on the fly is necessary. With the Skene dimmer my S2's just dim with my headlight down to something like 15% power. They're on full blast with my high beam and it's an issue on occasion.
 
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I left Clovis. NM at 5:30am a couple of weeks back to get a jump on the ride home. Seems like I rode for a little over an hour before the sun came up.

My Gold Wing's low beams didn't feel like enough to ride highway speeds, so I kicked on the high beams and that threw enough light down the road to see comfortably at those speeds. I was waiting for someone to flash me to turn them down, but no one did. So I just rode like that.

Wasn't so bad, but didn't particularly enjoy it. Felt much more comfortable when the sun came up and I could see off into the sides of the road.
 
I have the Save-A-Deer whistle on my little Ninja. One complaint is that it needs 40 mph wind speed to whistle loudly. On the one mile loose gravel road to my house, 30 mph seems fast enough, 20 mph if the county road grader has has unimproved it. And that mile is where there's always deer jumping across, feeding on the shoulder or has fawn(s) unable to jump the fence. The other is that the glue to attach it wasn't strong enough to hold it on my front fender at highway speeds.

Has anyone had good results with the electric deer whistles?
 
Currently, I'm running Baja Designs S2 lights and a Skene Dimmer on the CB500X. They're pretty good on the little honda (it doesn't go that fast) and they don't draw much electricity. They're also 10x better than the ADV Monster lights ever thought about being. On single lane goat paths at night the headlights are not my limiting factor and on open road I can see plenty far and wide with them at reasonable speeds.... With the Skene dimmer my S2's just dim with my headlight down to something like 15% power. They're on full blast with my high beam and it's an issue on occasion.

I have the S2 sport driving lights (wide & spot combo) on a similar setup in my Africa Twin. I'm very happy with the setup. I was out last night and they did great as usual. The lights being on at 20% during the day is a big plus too. Far fewer cars pull out in front of me since I installed them.
 
I left Clovis. NM at 5:30am a couple of weeks back to get a jump on the ride home. Seems like I rode for a little over an hour before the sun came up.

My Gold Wing's low beams didn't feel like enough to ride highway speeds, so I kicked on the high beams and that threw enough light down the road to see comfortably at those speeds. I was waiting for someone to flash me to turn them down, but no one did. So I just rode like that.

Wasn't so bad, but didn't particularly enjoy it. Felt much more comfortable when the sun came up and I could see off into the sides of the road.

I ran into the same problem back in August with the FJR. I ran with the halogen high beams from Pecos to Santo on I-20 and never got flashed. I attribute this to all the OEM LED headlights running around now. Those things are annoying and put off a huge glare despite being legal. Somehow.

The factory lights were just enough but I definitely felt like they were a little lacking. And the FJR is generally regarded as having pretty decent headlights - for a motorcycle.

I was glad to get off onto the two lane roads there in Santo and drop my speed just a bit.

I have the S2 sport driving lights (wide & spot combo) on a similar setup in my Africa Twin. I'm very happy with the setup. I was out last night and they did great as usual. The lights being on at 20% during the day is a big plus too. Far fewer cars pull out in front of me since I installed them.

I run a spot on the left side and a driving combo on the right. The cool thing is BD sells all the different lenses separately so it's easy to experiment with different beam patterns.
 
I run a spot on the left side and a driving combo on the right. The cool thing is BD sells all the different lenses separately so it's easy to experiment with different beam patterns.

Both of mine are the wide/spot combo. I'm really happy with them and haven't had any desire to change. It's a really cool feature though.
 
I have the Save-A-Deer whistle on my little Ninja. One complaint is that it needs 40 mph wind speed to whistle loudly. On the one mile loose gravel road to my house, 30 mph seems fast enough, 20 mph if the county road grader has has unimproved it. And that mile is where there's always deer jumping across, feeding on the shoulder or has fawn(s) unable to jump the fence. The other is that the glue to attach it wasn't strong enough to hold it on my front fender at highway speeds.

Has anyone had good results with the electric deer whistles?
My grand dad hit two deer in one year with deer whistles on his truck and he swore they did not work so iv never tried them.
I just try to ride as little as posable at night.
 
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