October 5, 2005 @ 5:16 am
Invisibility
Except during major road trips I don’t ride at night, but on the road I often ghost away from my motel in the pre-dawn dark and slip along a small town main street to the interstate. I like the lonely dark punctuated by flashing stoplights and the occasional watchful cop car nosing out of a side street.
There is no traffic, and even on the interstate your only company is an occasional long haul trucker. The lights in your speedometer cluster are cheerful, and the long throw of your headlight is a bright rope pulling you through the night. Headlights approaching you are seen minutes before they arrive and the red taillight ahead of you is a goal you may never reach.
Because I’m a bright, constantly moving, light at the center of the empty dark seeing and being seen are hardly a problem. Night riding on busy urban streets is. I’ve become increasingly aware of how nearly invisible motorcycles can be as the result of a work schedule that has kept me on city streets well after dark.
In a line of traffic, whether it’s yours or the stream of lights coming toward you, a motorcycle with only a tail light and a head light is virtually invisible. I’m a rider and I’m certainly more conscious of other bikes than the drivers of the cars around me. (Ain’t that the truth, gang! Even at high noon they don’t see us.) At night a single tail light disappears in the cluster of tail lights in the traffic ahead of you. The approaching headlight of a motorcycle gets lost in the glare of headlights at different distances in front of you.
The rider not wearing a helmet is even worse off. His or her presence in the traffic stream can come, too late, as a complete surprise. Riding bareheaded in city traffic may be cool when it’s hot; it may look cool when you get where you’re going; it’s like having a cloak of invisibility.
For years I’ve thought that wearing a reflector vest looked incredibly dorky. Maybe it does, but I no longer give a… well you get the idea. I’d rather be a visible dork than an invisible accident statistic. And I’ve been assured by folks who have seen me on the road that it really does make a difference.
