[tigerblade]

Caught part of a cager show the other night. One of the guys was expounding the virtues of daytime running lights for cars & trucks, pointing out that he had been a strong advocate for several years. Thanks guy, for making us more invisible...

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Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.

 

[#2f4]

The government has made it a requirment that car manufacturers make there day time running lights a lower wattage light than normal motorcyle, and night time lights that are on cars, still the day time running lights do blend in with us, which does not help much !

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texas tornado #2

jim

 

[Cosmo]

Headlight is on "high" all the time, day or night. After dark, almost every cage on the road flashes it's brights at me to get me to dim my light. I just smile from inside my helmet. Well, since they are flashing me, at least I KNOW THEY SEE ME!

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Cosmo
"You have some options to choose from: You can lead, you can follow, or you can get out of the way!"

 

[Tristan]

I am totally dumbfounded by the number of motorcyclists who see DRL's as a threat to us. Like a reduction in car vs. car accidents will lead to an increase in car vs. bike ones! Yeah, I know the argument but I just don't buy it.

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Heeeere piggy piggy...

 

[Rossco929]

I, too, use my highbeams during the daylight. At night, though, I use the low beams because running high beams is dangerous as it can blind the cage drivers, and make it harder for them to judge where I am.

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Rossco.

 

[rponiarski]

I can see both sides. At one point our having our lights on all the time made us stand out and we do need that. On the other hand, having daytime running lights may make cagers a bit more aware and end up seeing me after all. I just keep on riding as if they all want to kill me, thus being real cautious on how I ride.

Remember, you are not paranoid when they are out to get you!



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Richard M. Poniarski
'00 Kawasaki ZR750F2, a.k.a. ZR-7
AMA #674623
NY S666C
ZR7OA #3

 

[tigerblade]

I guess the way I feel about it is that people adjust to "the norm" and if you make what stood out before (in this case daytime lights) the norm, then people will become oblivious to it. I've read about stoplight studies (don't ask me why) where the delay was increased on the yellow-to-red transition so that people would have more time to get through the intersection before the cross-traffic had green. All that happened was that more people tried to get through on yellow because they knew they had the extra time.
May not be a good argument but makes sense in my head...

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Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.

 

[Cosmo]

Argh! After reading Tigerblade's post, I got a little steamed. He brought up an excellent point that hadn't even occured to me prior. Once everyone (bikes & cages) has lights on during the day, everyone will become accustomed to seeing them, and no one will pay any attention anymore. This is a very sad fact. I can remember waaaaaay back in 1985 or so when I first started riding, most bikes had an ON/OFF switch for the headlight. The "cutting edge" motorcycle safety literature back then all said stuff like "for increased visibility during the day, turn on your headlight". Great advice both then and now. Having headlight(s) on during the day is a good idea. It does promote increased visibility. It used to be that motorcyclists had this little trick to themselves. It's goona be interesting to see how the accident stats go up in the next 5 years or so when every car manufacturer equips their cages with DRL's. Again, I say ARRRGH!

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Cosmo
"You have some options to choose from: You can lead, you can follow, or you can get out of the way!"

 

[Ratsalad]

I haven't ever really noticed a difference between having low or high beams on during the daytime.
In MY experience, most of the time it isn't the drivers coming at me that's the visibility problem. It's the people right around me that I'm more worried about making sure I'm seen.
I usually just run low beams during the day.

One of the things that I ALWAYS do to increase visibility is....When approaching an intersection, if there is a car in the opposing left turn lane I will weave 3 or 4 times and that will usually get there attention. A headlight moving from side to side as opposed to relativly stationary seems to work quite well,at least so far..


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Dave fzR1

"When I grow up... I wanna be a SQUIIIID!"

 

[funksouljon]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Ratsalad:
One of the things that I ALWAYS do to increase visibility is....When approaching an intersection, if there is a car in the opposing left turn lane I will weave 3 or 4 times and that will usually get there attention. A headlight moving from side to side as opposed to relativly stationary seems to work quite well,at least so far..


<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

No, they just think you are drunk! But I too use high beams 24/7. But, how may times have you heard a cager say "I didn't even see them/you" even after eye contact was made? If cagers could turn their brain's on as easily as a light switch this wouldn't be an issue. Make driving tests harder and more frequent as well as monitor driving histories would help.

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If if if....
If a frog had wings, he wouldn't bump his ass every time he jumps!

 

[Dad]

I don't know why car running lights matter at all relative to bikes. The point of turning the lights on for bikes was for cars to to see them at all! I am old enough to have been riding before this was a requirement and the problem was that bikes often blended in to the background and plain old were not seen by car drivers who then pulled out in front of them. As a biker, I almost did this once myself. I looked up a road, saw nothing, looked down the road, saw nothing, and fortunately as I was starting to move, I looked up the road again and a bike was right there. This startled me as much as the biker because he had to have been there the first time I had looked but I never saw him. Not long after this, I heard that New York had made it a law that bikes had to leave their lights on during the day and I realized first hand why that was and also what a good idea it was. Don't you know that some people were bitching about that just like they do about helmet laws now.

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[Ratsalad]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by funksouljon:
No, they just think you are drunk!

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I am

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Dave fzR1

"When I grow up... I wanna be a SQUIIIID!"

[This message has been edited by Ratsalad (edited October 16, 2000).]