Braking Was : Best way to travel 5 miles to a train station?

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the

People; we must ban all people. It's the only way to be sure.


--

Dave

GS 850 x2 / SE 6a
SbS#6 DIAABTCOD#16 APOSTLE#6 FUB#3
FUB KotL OSOS#12? UKRMMA#19 COSOC#10

 

How many bulbs are on is usually the easiest way to tell with modern sports
bikes - all of them, it's likely to be high beam - one out of 2/3 , two out
of four etc, likely to be on dip. You *do* get badly adjusted lights, no
denying it - however the fact that the front of a motorcycle is more
'active' (ie goes up and down more than a car when accelerating/braking)
means those angles tend to alter - perhaps leading you to think it's on
main, when it isn't. Frequently I'm flashed by vehicles when going up or
down hills - the beam on mine is adjusted correctly, it's just the other
party hasn't taken the topography into consideration.

I certainly don't - I know one or two people who do/did, but on the whole I
don't see too many on main beam.
The bulbs potentially *are* brighter, but that's to offset the fact that
there are often less bulbs available.
On the whole motorcycle lights aren't all that great, though there are a few
bikes that are as good as what you find in a modern car.

The law didn't change AFAIK - it was done as a 'safety initiative' - the
*DIP* beam is on as soon as the ignition is turned on, so even when the
engine is off. I think it's led to more than a few flat battery moments.

Sitting around with the main beam on would actually make that worse

 

Exactly. If practical experience and common sense worked we wouldn't
have had to invent science.

You don't even know what your stopping distances are in terms of
numbers, which is what we're talking about here.

 

And without measuring you don't know what your stopping distances are
in terms of *numbers*, which is what is being discussed here.

 

It's actually not too hard to invent a bike-mountable g meter which
will give you better than 10% accuracy, which is all you need to tell
the difference between .77g and 1g.

And if you're prepared to spend some money you can buy one which will
give you better than 1% accuracy and keep a continuous time-stamped
log of its readings.

You could also get someone to video you doing a maximum stoppie, and
analyse the video carefully frame by frame afterwards. Or you could do
the same to videos of racing motorcycles, given an accurate map of the
track.

 

I know you used the word usually, but both my bikes have twin headlights
which are both on when dipped. I get flashed by fuckwits who think that
I must be on main beam because they are both lit, and yes they are
correctly aligned.

snip

Some safety initiative, lets take away 50% of the available lighting!
Wasn't it some tortured thinking about car drivers believing you might
be a car a long way off rather than a bike close by, forgetting that at
anything more than a few yards the two light sources would appear to
merge anyway.