Best Motorcycle Safety Upgrade For Under $20! (TBR7, Hawk 250, Etc.)

Now I own a TaoTao TBR7 and have learned much from the more prominent group of RPS Hawk 250 owners. So I feel this safety upgrade post will apply to many of my fellow Chonda owners out there. Hoping you guys get value from my experience, and you too can ride safer out there! Thanks for stopping by.

Motorcycle Riding Can Be Unsafe, and This Upgrade Has Helped Me!

Not click-bait! So to save you time, the solution is:  

A brighter headlight! Yes, the TBR7 comes with a halogen(I believe) incandescent headlight bulb. The LED headlight upgrade (Read Previous Post: TBR7 Motorcycle LED Headlight Bulb Upgrade.) has helped me out.  

Seriously, I feel the brighter/whiter headlight has helped me avoid getting hit. Face it, although we ride on smaller, more agile vehicles compared to cars and trucks, we can’t avoid the problems associated with how bad drivers treat us as if we are invisible.

In case you don’t believe a simple LED headlight upgrade is necessary for your Chonda(TBR7, Hawk 250, etc.), and I admit this is more for riding on the street, which is most of all my experience but please listen.

Author’s Notice: This page contains affiliate links, for which I may earn a commission by their use. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying Amazon purchases.

Click For Current Motorcycle LED Head Light Bulb Prices.

Safety Review: Left Turns Of Death!

I want you to recall how many times you were riding down the road and saw the car or truck sitting at an intersection with their left blinker on waiting to turn.

Only to have them do the actual turn right in front of you? I have too many times. Now, if you haven’t had this happen to you, you only need it to happen once to get hurt badly. 

As motorcyclists, we are not surrounded by metal cages, airbags, restrain systems, etc. I wear armor and a helmet, but not enough to stand a broadside collision into a turning car while traveling at even low speeds.

I tried to avoid confrontation by checking my speed initially, so I traveled at only the posted safe speed. Covering my clutch, brakes, and sifter to either stop fast or shift down and swerve. Regardless, this only prepared me for the other driver’s mistakes.

However, these previous steps only helped me compensate for the other driver’s mistakes. I even tried to help the other drive NOT make mistakes by moving into lane position one to make myself more visible.

Am I Invisible? Not Anymore! See The Light (My Headlight!)

I did see some decline in people turning in front of me, I feel this wasn’t just a paranoia assumption, but turns didn’t completely stop.

I added to help other drivers to see me by ‘waggling,’ meaning I swayed my handlebars back and forth to display movement get my light more noticed. This more active approach has helped as well. 

So, The Safety Upgrade Is More Than A New LED Headlight? 

Yes, the headlight gives us the tool to be seen more, and my behavior change, making myself more visible by changing position and moving the headlight back and forth to be seen, has helped.

However, I feel just being seen better with the new headlight has reduced the instances I thought I needed to act to get other drivers to drive more safely. The headlight projects down the road to identify that I am coming, and conscious drivers notice me sooner and take steps to drive safer.

Again, I recommend this upgrade regardless of whether you click on my affiliate links or not; get the brighter headlight upgrade. With future motorcycles I plan to purchase, upgrading the headlight be on my to-do list of safety upgrades.

Oh, Another Motorcycle Safety Story.

Why am I posting this after creating a couple of posts about how to do the actual TBR7 headlight upgrade and alignment adjustments?

Another Close Call While Riding My Motorcycle.

Yesterday I was out riding, and the driver to the right of me in a traffic light-controlled intersection almost pulled out right into me.

I was riding straight through the intersection, and the lady was pulling out, turning right. She was pulling out right in front of me and gassing it. Like she was either trying to get in front of me or hit me. I could have braked hard. She swerved around her left, possibly going headfirst into a car in the opposite lane.

I took a second to change lane position back and forth, splashing her face with my headlight’s beam, and she locked up her brakes. I could see the car slam to a stop by how the nose dipped down. She was still mainly in the intersection and partially blocking my travel lane, but I got her to stop, and I had extra room to go around her.

It looked as if she didn’t see me till my headlights hit her, till it looked like I was going to hit her? Guessing getting a headlight beam hitting you in the face triggers a defensive behavior like ‘freezing’?

Again, this is my experience after upgrading my headlight, and I thought the results were positive enough ( I am not roadkill) to share them with you. It’s a cheap safety upgrade for my TBR7, under twenty bucks, and well worth it.  

Ride Safe, Ride Fun!

Extra Info:

If you are interested in upgrading your Chonda(TBR7, Hawk 250, etc.), here is my post about the trials and errors I went through to get the correct led headlight bulb. Previous Post: TBR7 Motorcycle LED Headlight Bulb Upgrade.

Also, once I got the new led headlight bulb, it was much brighter, making it apparent the headlight arrived misaligned. Is your TBR7 headlight too low or too high? Check out this post to see how I realigned the height of my headlight. Previous Post: My Motorcycle Headlight Beam Adjustment Steps.

My Headlight Upgrade Part, Check for current prices:

Click For Current LED Headlight Prices.

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TBR7 Upgrades

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