Hello everyone I'm going to be doing my first night plowing tomorrow when I get home from work. We're looking to get about 6 inches according to the current forcast so I'll plow to make it easier for my wife to get to work in the morning.

Anyway my question is do any of you use a strobe or LED flasher to make yourself more visible during night plowing? And if so, where did you find it?

 

You can get an array of amber strobes or incandecent flashing lights for plowing at any place that sells plows for trucks, or a tractor supply company. Most plug into a cigarette lighter plug, so if your bike has one of those your in business. If not you could wire your own to a power source on the bike and use a trailer plug to disconnect it when not in use.

 

You make a good point about the safety of being visable to oncoming traffic. A good flasher or strobe would also help in the daytime I would think.

Where do you plan on mounting this lite? If you mount it on the front or rear rack it will be in your eyes as you go fore and aft while plowing and not be very visable to people approching.

Maybe it could be mounted on the end of a pole raising it above operator level and making it more visable to oncoming traffic.

 

Stick it on your back rack, alot of lights have a magnetic base, the stand is a good idea if you have the time to make one.

 

Why do you even need one? Are you going to be on a road mostly with alot of traffic? If not I wouldn't even worry about. If you are I would maybe get some reflective tape/striping and put on your clothes/quad. I think a strobe would actually scare some people where as a flashing light might be better but you would want to check your local/state laws if its allowed and what color to use.

I just use my headlights and my brake light and make sure no cars are around when I go out on the road to turn around.

 

Safety is something that is always on my mind. I have seen too many accidents that could have been prevented just by a few safety precautions. I look at it as yes I should be looking out for on-comming traffic before I pull out into the road, and I will, but there is nothing wrong with higher visibility just in case I'm plowing during a heavy snow and some yahoo comes flying up the road while I'm in it and they don't see me. I can site a perfect example of higher visibility making your plowing fun safer. Two weeks ago a co-worker of mine added a LED flasher under his rear rack just in case, and he swears it saved his life because it was snowing pretty hard and he lived just off the corner. He looked in the road, no traffic, pulled out, turned around, and lined up for his next pass, and around the corner came a car that barely managed to avoid him. The driver stopped to appologize (that's rare in my experience) and told my co-worker that if it were not for that flashing LED light he would never have seen him in time to avoid him. While I don't live on a corner, I do live just over the top of a rise, and I do plan to have all lights on when plowing but a little extra never hurts.

@teencubed - I was thinking of mounting it under my rear rack because my rear rack is all plastic so a magnetic mount strobe won't work, although I hadn't thought about putting it on a pole.

 

I got a yellow strobe type flasher at walmart for $11.00. It had a magnetic base and plugged into the cigarette lighter plug on my grizzly. To affix the magnetic base I took a couple pieces of sheet metal I had laying around and bent them to lock onto the rear rack of the quad.....the magnets hold it on just fine. The flasher has already helped when cars come up behind me while I'm pushing snow around the street and driveways....I highly recommend it.

 

I just set a magnetic mount halogen becon on my rear rack that I got from Adavance Auto Parts for $19. It's a cheapie and I already had to fix the plug once, but hey, it beats paying $50 on up for one.

I plow in heavy traffic areas plus I live on a busy corner, so plowing at the end of driveways sometimes takes more time waiting for traffic than it does to do the actual work. I am more concearned with traffic that is coming from behind me because my headlights draw enough attention up front. If I really wanted to stand out I'd get one of these... http://www.sirennet.com/whel2rotdiam.html That's a deal for only $75. A buddy of mine has that on his plow truck and it is BRIGHT!

 

Hey Offrider...thanks for the link. Thats a pretty good looking unit for that price...much better than the prices on ebay for similar units. I bet its much better than my wallyworld special (which I could mount on the front and thereby run both)

 

Another thing you could do is set out emergency triangles a few hundred feet before your driveway. If your on a corner then set them up so they can see the triangles before they even enter the turn, hilltop or whatever obstructs their view.

This way they'll have an idea something is up before they even get to you.