Driving lights

[jjulson]

What are you views on driving lights. Are they a good idea for night driving? Any experience?

[Guest pkksr]

I am not a fan of night driving because of the high deer population in our area. Lots of accidents with people getting killed. I like riding at night, but I am not comfortable with it. I like driving lights so that I'm more visible in metro traffic anytime.

[RSTDRIDER]

I run with driving lights all the time. I have noticed less cages pulling out in front of me in daylight. I work nights and ride at night quite a bit. They do help at night. Takes a little trial and error to get them aimed just right but when you do it really helps. I wired mine to be on all the time, not just when the high beams are on.

[Deacon]

I also ride with my highway lights on all the time.. Riding motorcycles is a past time for some and a life style for other. What ever the case, we all need to incorporate risk management in our activity.

Hell I even installed caliper lights.

 

Deacon

[padavidj]

Are they hard to wire yourself? Does anyone have some instructions on how to install them?

 

Dave

[RSTDRIDER]

They install fairly easy if you not color blind. I read the instrustions and thought this will be easy untill I got into the wiring and couldn't tell for sure what wire was what color. My son came home from work and pointed the right ones and it took about 40 min. Not hard to install at all.

[Pilot]

A word to the wise, be careful when wiring them to be on all the time. At night they are extreamly bright for oncoming traffic. And the police may not like it if you blind oncoming traffic. I'm speaking from experience here. I have mine wired to the high beam switch so that I can dim them when there's oncoming traffic. I just forgot to dim once (or twice) and once it happened to be a state cop, he reminded me that it's the law to dim your lights at night for oncoming traffic. Didn't give me a ticket just a friendly reminder. You could cause an accident by blinding people.

[Squidley]

Just a word here, there is a specific procedure for alignment of driving light so that they wont blind oncoming traffic. I have always run my Driving lights when I'm on the bike day or night. I use the driving lights as ditch runners, angling them just slightly to the right or left on their position on the bar. This gives a huge swath of light that covers the entire road and most of the ditches. A good quality light bulb makes a huge difference too in all the fwd facing lights that the bike has

[RSTDRIDER]

I have mine aimed like Squidly. They also dont glare back at you in fog if aimed down alittle.

[bobbyduck]

I also have them set up like Squidley - no complaints from oncomimg traffic (as in flashing brights at me) and I can see them deer-eyes before they jump.....