Wet surfaces in the dark

Surfaces that are wet at night do not change your road grip any differently than wet surfaces during daylight hours. However, wet surfaces at night do reflect a lot of light from street lamps and oncoming vehicles making to harder to see painted lines and general road conditions.

This reflection can make it harder to see road surfaces and items like the metal service plates installed in the road while you are dealing with traffic situations.

If you ride over a service plate in the road and you feel a little “extra free” movement underneath your seat, (ie middle of turning a corner at a set of traffic lights etc). Reacting with aggressive braking or other un-needed inputs when sliding over road service plates will undo a good day quickly.

Stay smooth on the controls and ride it out as you were before the encounter - Physics will allow the motorcycle to simply re-grip once the travel movement is completed over the road service plate provided you do not react with aggressive inputs on the motorcycle controls in response to that un-usual feeling the grip loss creates when travelling over metal plates. 

It will happen one day, you just need to expect a little wiggle and shuffle from underneath, it’s completely normal.

Pedestrians and other vehicles

Some cars may think you are a car positioned much further away than you really are which ends up with the motorcyclist being cut off more often when compared to daytime riding.

Pedestrians may not be visually obvious to you as they are not in well lit areas… Take extra care even under street lights as some pedestrians and cyclists do not care for the pedestrian crossing lights, some maybe intoxicated or simply some are just not watching where they are walking (ie Mobile device use!).

Riding in complete darkness

This is where things get much more serious, many more issues can occur that otherwise you would’ve seen sooner and reacted differently when under street lights.

Complete darkness turns any motorcycle rider into a blind mole. It is pretty hard job to feel your way around the darker countryside roads so a few extra considerations do apply.

Slow down, ride to the conditions

Ride to your own vanishing point ahead with no assumptions. You cannot see the layer of road grit around the next corner, nor the pot holes arriving, or anything like dog walkers or other non-vehicle items that may cross your path you cannot see easily.

Do not attempt to ride in frozen temperatures when no traffic exists as black ice and a lack of traffic to warm up the road surface will create traction issues for any vehicle. But the difference is a motorcycle rider is not in a rolling “safety” cage and is prone to injury via trees, side rails and other immediate objects like parked vehicles on the road sides in the event you slide off the road surface due to black ice.

Road positioning

You might go from riding with good road positioning during daylight hours to suddenly squaring off corners and cutting center lines on the road at night…

Why? Because you are trying to turn the motorcycle so you can see where you need to go with the motorcycle head light vs riding the same corner section in daylight hours where you  maintain good road positioning.. See target fixation item below! 

Positioning errors in complete darkness is directly related to your speed travelled.

Watch out for target fixation

If you do not look beyond the immediate illuminated area in front of you, potentially you will target fixate on your own head light illumination area as that is what you are focused on.

This effect is even more apparent when using auxiliary high powered lights that are fixed on the motorcycle as it actually creates more light pollution and glare the rider cannot see past. 

When a road sign illuminates and reflects from your own head light, it’s same sort of light pollution that is reflected back at you, the rider cannot see further ahead through corners as its not pointed at the corner exit and the rider’s vision is essentially light polluted in those  moments. 

Corners

The motorcycle head light typically cannot look upwards and through corners while the motorcycle is turning and actually you will not see road reflectors soon enough as the light is not shining through the corner. Slow down and ride to your vanishing point. 

We have a comparison video using a helmet light further down below (Not road legal, but much safer!)

On coming vehicles

You may (will) get blinded by vehicle head lights coming towards you in the middle of a corner or not even see a corner approaching on long straights as oncoming lights can pollute your vision with strong light glare. This prevents you from effectively seeing anything else beyond the light glare and that can include where you might be headed!

One trick is to close one eye (assuming you have two eyes!) when vehicles approach your motorcycle at night and once they have passed, when that one eye is re-opened it is not re-adjusting to the dark landscape after the bright headlights.

Some vehicles may not be even driving/riding to their own ability and may actually be on your side of the road coming towards you, that can be a hard situation to manage as you can’t see a exit path or strategy ahead due to the light glare coming towards you.

Vehicles coming from behind

Most vehicles are patient and drive/ride to the conditions but if you are actually holding up traffic flow to the point of inconvenience as you cannot see further ahead or are uncomfortable, pull over only when there is somewhere safe to do so like a slow vehicle lane and let them pass. 

You may have to adjust your side view mirrors so vehicle head lights are not directly shining in your eyes while riding. Position the mirror slightly so you just need to move your head a little more to see behind you without being constantly blinded from behind.