Tom Barber sent in this text and photos describing how he made his Yamaha FJR1300 more visible to other drivers/riders on the road. On 10/5/02 he wrote:
I don't particularly care for the looks of large tail trunks (top cases),
but I wanted to put something other than a soft bag on the tail rack. I
saw a picture of this tail trunk from Chase Harper's Stealth line and
ordered one. I also ordered an LED strip and the Backoff controller to
make the LEDs flash on and off.
Part of the reason that I wanted to put a tail trunk such as this on was
that I wanted to install an LED strip. The reason is that I suspect that
drivers are becoming conditioned to associate braking with that 3rd brake
light in cars and don't necessarily react to the regular brake light the
way that they used to. Also if a driver sees your brake light only after
you have already applied the brake, they don't see the change in brightness
and in this case there is a failure to trip the brain's primeval mechanism
for detecting movement.
Perhaps this is the reason why the law was changed
to require cars to have the 3rd brake light. That, along with the flashing
LEDs and the reflective tape, has produced the desired effect. Since I did
this over a month ago, I can recall only a single instance of an automobile
driver staying too close on the highway or approaching too close or too
quickly at a stop light.
The frontal view above was taken with flash and it demonstrates how the 3M
reflective tape (between the headlights)
reflects light back to the source. When a car shines its
headlights on this tape, that light is always reflected back toward the
headlights no matter what the angle of the tape surface relative to the
light source.
This is the same tape that is on the rear of the panniers
but it doesn't look as bright in the above photo because the daylight washes
out the flash. I don't know how they make this stuff but I will speculate
that it involves a specific crystalline molecule. My reason for putting
this on the front was not for safety but was purely to change the look. It
is interesting but I'm undecided on whether it is going to stay.
Note the Backoff light attached to the upper rear edge of the tail trunk.
To connect the Backoff controller you need to connect to the running light,
the brake light, and the ground. I first thought that it would be easy to
access these at the wiring harness that runs along the side of the
sub-frame, but that turned out not to be the case. I pulled one of the
bulb sockets out so I could access the wires there.
The easiest method
then was to cut all three wires, strip all six wire ends, solder six
sections of wire with matching gauge and apply heat shrink (using a butane
lighter). This left me with six wire ends but now easily accessible. To
finish without having an excess of loose wires I wrapped it all up neatly
with vinyl tape.
