Top motorcycle lighting upgrades

Arguably, there are two areas of lighting that are critical for motorcycle riders; the ability to see where you are going and making sure that other road users can see you.

Advances in lighting technology have made both much better today than they have ever been but there are still steps you can take to improve them.

First and foremost is seeing where you are going. Many bikes nowadays come with LED lighting for greater light output and penetration with reduced power consumption and they also use Day Running Lights to highlight your presence to other road users.

Generally, there isn’t much to be gained upgrading here, except by adding additional lights for use in fog or heavy-traffic conditions, perhaps. However, older bikes using traditional halogen-style bulbs can often gain vision with uprated bulbs, producing more light for the same power consumption.

Related: Best motorcycle headlight bulbs

Similarly, you don’t need much illuminated vision behind you but people need to be able to see you, so upgraded bulbs or switching from halogen to faster-illuminating LEDs can often improve people’s response to your brake lights.

It is also possible to add brake lights that will automatically illuminate when you roll off the throttle or flash when you brake heavily like modern bikes and cars.

We also know that moving objects attract attention better than static ones and the car-style of progressive indicators is now finding its way into bikes, to give an even better indication of a rider's intention to change direction.

Here is a selection of upgrades we think could help you see the way.

They are designed to fit ideally on engine crash bars, for example and onto tubes and come with the necessary wiring loom, switches and control button. They use three LED chips in each lamp to push out a quoted 3500 lumens for 50,000 hours of use.

It features a halo day running light and twin LEDs for dipped and for main beam use. Apparently, it will produce three times the light of a normal headlight or twice that of an LED unit and project light 500-525ft ahead of the bike.

They are E-marked for road use as both position lights and indicators and each features 15 LEDs over a length of just under three inches.

Using 12 LED units per indicator, they move out from the inner edge and are a direct replacement for LED indicators, though normal bulbs may require a resistor. They are designed to fit a 10mm mounting hole so they should work with a number of bikes and they feature two wires – live and earth. The price is for a pair.

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