What do you guys think of Active side lighting?

Or basically Glow in the dark rim tape with exciter UV LEDs. It seems a company lunasee is starting to market such a device. There price is astronomical. But I like the concept. Shouldn't be too hard to do a "poor mans" version if there price is in the luxury market.

Lots of cool videos on there website
I also found a company that sells just the glow in the dark tape

Then we could do what we do best with bright, narrow focus UV LED's.

I would be installing on my motorcycle. And the install does not look real easy. But would be really cool!


See Rule #3 Do not Hot Link images, Rule #6 Do not post links directly to sales sites - Norm

Two words: "target fixation"

These woud make one *less* safe, in my opinion.

Glow in the dark or retroreflective? Glow in the dark stuff isn't particularly bright.

This forum is for bicycles but you are talking about a motorcycle right? If it was for a bicycle, I would say that if you need to be seen from 90 degrees on the side then you aren't riding defensively enough, and your front lights need improvement.

It is far superior to get seen much earlier - when both you and the car are heading towards the point where your paths will intersect. This means you need good "be seen" lights to the front and maybe up to 45 degrees either side of front. One way I've started doing this is to have a zebralight sc51 on my helmet in the 4 hertz blinky mode, and this way I can aim off to the sides at any car approaching from a side street or driveway. It also means I can see if they are looking at me or not (and they always are now - when the inside of the their car starts flashing they can't help but notice!).

It is glow in the dark, But constantly charged by UV LED's. Appears fairly bright. Most people are saying the reflective is not as effective because you already need to be in front of the headlights to be seen.

It looks like the best wavelength to charge glow in the dark paint is around 375nm-405nm. I want to try getting some of the glow skins from therimskin to play with how bright they can get. Looks like the band will be 8mm thick. twice the width of the other companies. I'm figuring get the LED as close to the rim as possible and see what happens.

Had one guy mention Cold cathode bulbs. They are cheap and available in 12v. BUT there much bigger than LED's and i'm guessing more fragile.

That Lunasee system looks interesting, and may well give a real safety benefit on bicycles. I think the same of the Glo Bars idea, which is in line with the most recent research, done on motorcycles, regarding how to effectively show other drivers what's in front of them.

A motorcycle application of the Lunasee strips would be a good bit more problematic. In the first place, motorcycles are motor vehicles, and as such are subject to the applicable regulations on lighting devices and systems. One such regulation is on light color, which in many jurisdictions does not allow for the green light the Lunasee strips appear to emit. Whether or not you would actually get a ticket for it is not the main issue; it's a bad idea to put nonstandard lights into the traffic scene. Many people who do this, and those who encourage them by marketing the equipment and supplies, tend to get caught up in the (often unsupported) claims of how nifty their product is, and sometimes do not properly understand that making something like a motorcycle more visible does not necessarily make it less likely to be involved in a crash. Without that understanding, it's easy to lose sight of the actual goal, which is to improve traffic safety. Flashing brake lights, UV-glow wheel rims, etc, can tend to work against the goal no matter how much they might align with someone's concept of common sense, because they force other drivers to divert attentional resources away from the task at hand (not hitting you) while they figure out what your nonstandard lights are trying to convey. It might only take a second, but a second is easily the difference between hit and miss. I would have much less qualm about this system for use on motorcycles if the strips emitted amber light, or -- probably better -- amber front and red rear.

We talked about this with the black, yet reflective material we added to the back of the bike too. I saw a school bus with it and at a distance at night i couldn't figure out what it was so i got closer to see.

Same i guess could happen with a reflective bags on the motorcycle. Sometimes you screwed either way you go. I did note that riding a black bike the little reflectors they gave us are worthless. Need something on there. The rear bags virtually block the taillight and headlight just appears as a point of light from the side. At least reflective, or glowing rim tape gives you distance and a better reference to size of vehical.

Imapilot said:

The rear bags virtually block the taillight and headlight just appears as a point of light from the side.

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It seems that these rear bags render your tail lamp inoperative; they need to be repositioned, or the tail lamp moved to another location such that the bags don't block it (and in accordance with regulations on motorcycle tail lamps).

The bike is a stock GTR1400 with factory mounted bags. In retrospect, the taillight is behind the bags. But the bags block any secondary illumination the taillight/license plate light would offer of the tire/swing arm in addition to it being a flat LED taillight so the profile from the side is virtually nill.

bbb74 said:

This forum is for bicycles but you are talking about a motorcycle right? If it was for a bicycle, I would say that if you need to be seen from 90 degrees on the side then you aren't riding defensively enough, and your front lights need improvement.

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I originally posted in the Bicycle forums because a bike shares more with a motorcycle as far as profile does than a car.

bbb74 said:

Glow in the dark or retroreflective? Glow in the dark stuff isn't particularly bright.

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It looks like they experimented with creating a brighter then normal pigmented vinyl they do seem to have a superior product. i don't know how to show a link on this forum properly, best i can say is try find the kickstarter page for rimskin for there glow tape. Goes a bit into the phosphor they used and the improvements to the brightness.


I also looked into the legality of the idea. this is for PA

full statute: http://www.dmv.state.pa.us/pdotforms/vehicle_code/chapter43.pdf

2002 Amendment. Act 229 added section 4309. See section 21 of Act 229 in the appendix to this title for special provisions relating to promulgation of guidelines to implement Act 229.
§ 4310. Motorcycle lighting.
Auxiliary lighting may be added to a motorcycle to protect the driver, including blue dot illumination, standard bulb running lights and light-emitting diode (LED) pods and strips.
(June 29, 2006, P.L.205, No.50, eff. 60 days)

Have you considered putting Solas (safety of life at sea) tape anywhere in the back? Solas tape is incredibly reflective and very bright. It can also be found as conspicuity tape.

Imapilot said:

I also looked into the legality of the idea. this is for PA

full statute: http://www.dmv.state.pa.us/pdotforms/vehicle_code/chapter43.pdf

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However, such equipment, according to Federal Law, cannot render the existing regulated equipment inoperative, by obscuring it or introducing ambiguity in the signalling, etc.