Mirrors for motorcycle safety

Why have them?

The mirrors on your motorcycle are an important piece of your motorcycle hardware. When well placed they can increase your peripheral vision by giving you nearly 100% view to the rear and or side of your motorcycle. This extra vision may save you from a nasty situation before it occurs or just enable you to move more easily through congested traffic.

How to align them?

Correct adjustment of your mirrors is crucial, you should remember to check them each time you ride your bike and adjust them when necessary. Always adjust the mirrors while you are stationary. Correct adjustment should give you an unobstructed view to the side and rear, if this isn’t the case you may need to look at getting different mirrors or at least look at mounting them differently. 

Why to watch your back!

The problem of poor rear viewing often occurs on sport bikes where the fairing is aerodynamically designed to give the smoothest flow of wind across the fairing cutting wind resistance. The mountings on these bikes are often short and sometimes poorly placed making rear view vision almost impossible or you have to chicken wing your arm to get any rear view at all. Poor design on the part of the manufacturers but aerodynamically sound. It may be possible to place the mountings higher up the fairing in some cases solving the problem but in others it’s impossible. 

Replace that which is broken…

Some mirrors vibrate badly which impairs your vision, this can make your mirror completely useless in some situations. The vibration problem can be rectified by fitting an isolator which fits between the mirror mounting and the mirror itself.

Size and shape of the mirrors may change with the make and brand of the item and or your personal choice when it comes to aftermarket purchases, just remember though it’s better to buy something that’s useful rather than not even when it looks good. Of course buying mirrors that look good and are useful is even better.

Do not run a cracked mirror as it distorts the view and can show you only half the picture possibly resulting in a mishap. Also, always keep the mirrors clean and shinning as any sort of dirt or muck on them could also hide essential detail of the rear view. And to sum it up, always keep the mirrors on the motorcycle and get in a habit to use them. Ride safe!