Have you seen the light…? No, not a religious revelation but serious off-road lighting for serious off road riding only!
- Jonathan Binnington
- 33 minutes ago
- 7 min read
On a dark desert byway
Cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of colitas
Rising up through the air…
Up ahead in the distance
I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to stop for the night.
Eagles - Hotel California
The powers-that-be have exercised their prerogative to mess with our body-clocks and Winter Time for those in the northern hemisphere has begun. I have it on good authority that not every day will be quite like this ^ and the nights will be quite dark too.
For me, winter is a time to lay plans for what to do when longer, warmer, drier days return and i can get back to outdoorsy things. One of my winter activities these days is making preparations for next years’ VIME events (but you already know that).
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NOW READ THIS! Canada Vehicle Construction and Use legislation. Legal disclaimer starts.
I’m going to begin this blog post by quoting Canada and BC law. Specifically Canada motor vehicle construction and use law as it applies to vehicle lighting. But before I go into the details, I will summarise by saying you will contravene the vehicle lighting laws if you fit non-type approved lights to your vehicle, in a non-approved manner whether or not you use them…
Proceed at your own risk!
Now, some of the relevant details.
“Division 4 of the Canada Motor Vehicle Act Regulations sets out the requirements for lamps on vehicles. Divisions 4.02 - General Lighting Requirements, 4.09 - Auxiliary Driving Lamps, 4.25 - Off-road Lamps.”
In general
all lamps and reflectors fitted to vehicles MUST BE type approved (DOT, SAE or European “e” marked)
It is unlawful to fit High Intensity Discharge bulbs (LED bulbs) in reflector housings that are not designed and marked as appropriate for their use. This means you can’t fit a LED H4 light bulb into a headlight shell designed for a tungsten-halogen filament H4 bulb…
“Auxiliary driving lights” (maximum of 2) must be fitted more than 40cm high and less than 1.06m high on the vehicle. They must also only be illuminated on high beam of the headlights.
“A vehicle equipped with off-road lights (e.g. a light bar or helmet head lights) must have the lamps concealed with opaque covers when on-road”
There is much more detail to be found in the hyperlinks above and below…
These Canadian regulations very closely follow European and UK regulations. Their purpose is to restrain individuals from operating vehicles with lights that are so bright that they will dazzle or temporarily blind other road users and so create potentially lethal situations.
The Motor Vehicle Act Regulations can be found at https://www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/civix/document/id/complete/statreg/26_58_00
As a final note of caution, Forest Service Roads are classified and public highways and the regulations cited are as applicable to FSRs as any other “on-road” situation.
I wish to vigorously emphasise that I DO NOT advise, encourage or condone the breaking of any laws!
If you are going to fit extra lighting to your bike, you must only use it in genuine off-road situations.
Legal disclaimer ends.
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The 24 Heures du GoldRiver - 2026
As you know, next year’s autumn event Is going to be a 24 hour event with night stages. The 24 Heures du GoldRiver will run over the Labour Day weekend (Thursday 3 September arrive, Friday 4 September Prologue, Rally Saturday and Sunday, go home Labour Day Monday 7th September).
A quick internet search tells that Saturday sunset will be at 7:04pm and sunrise on Sunday will be at 7:06am. Pretty much the autumn equinox then. If the skies are clear, i think we can expect last and first light to be 30-40minutes before and after sunrise and sunset, but nevertheless there will be a long night to ride through. The phase of the moon will be in it’s last quarter with only about 40% of its disc showing - again depending on how much cloud cover we get. Also the moon will not become visible until after midnight.
We cannot control the heavens! But we can control the equipment we ride with….
AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, WHEN AND WHERE WE CHOOSE TO USE IT!
I would venture to suggest that while being mindful of the foregoing legal issues, if you are alone on a backcountry FSR, encountering no other road users, you might be forgiven for using your 6000 lumen off-road helmet light - not that I am encouraging nor condoning your illegal operation of a light…
Most DualSport bikes are not equipped with great headlights. Adequate is about as good as it gets - for use on well lit highways. Adventure bike lighting is usually somewhat better But many of us do not have the luxury of being able to choose our bike for the lighting it is able to provide for the riding we plan to do…
So, in the spirit of grassroots motorcycling, we have to adapt, improvise and overcome.
We have three alternatives as I see things (…), change the headlight bulb, change the headlight and/or add extra lighting.
None of this may be legal, so make your own informed decisions!
Now for some physics - you can skip this if you want…
Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain. Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet.
Light is a form of energy. Specifically visible light is the portion of the ElectroMagnetic Spectrum (EMS) that our eyes can see. The colours we can see correspond to the wavelengths of the visible light radiations. Red light has the longest wavelength that we can see, Violet is the shortest wavelength we can see.
The EMS is far greater / wider than we can see, wavelengths longer than visible red light are infrared-red radiation (IR), also known as heat radiation, and EMS wavelengths longer still are also known as radio waves. Wavelengths shorter than visible violet light are (unsurprisingly) ultra-violet radiation (UV) which gives rise to sunburn, skin cancer and all sorts of other things. Radiation with wavelengths still shorter comprise X-Rays, gamma rays and cosmic rays.
For a long time, dinosaurs to cavemen, the only source of light (and heat) other than the sun and the stars was fire. Well, that’s not strictly true as there is bioluminescence….
Transforming (transduction) of chemical energy (fuel) into light and heat is how fire does it.
That the source of this visible and IR radiation arises from electrons jumping around inside atoms matters not to us at the moment - but this is where all brightness originates. Jumpy electrons.
And then came Joseph Swan and a few years later Thomas Edison who passed electric currents through conducting filaments in vacuum glass envelopes (bulbs) and they created “electric lighting”. No matter that less than 5% of the electrical energy is turned into visible light (the rest being less useful heat), the incandescent light bulb was king.
It was easy to quantify the light rating of incandescent bulbs in terms of their electrical power consumption (watts = volts x amps) and while all light sources were incandescent bulbs, the Watt was king!
Then came other light sources, arc lamps (basically arc welding light sources), mercury vapour discharge lights, sodium vapour lights, fluorescent lights, light-emitting diodes, neon lights. And suddenly the power-rating of lights in terms of energy consumption bore no resemblance to the light they emitted…
Enter, The Lumen…
The Lumen is the SI unit of brightness. The metric system. Metre, kilogramme, second. The Lumen, luminous flux is a measure of “visible brightness” and is a means by which the brightness of different light sources can be directly compared.
A 60 Watt incandescent bulb produces 800 lumens
A 100 Watt incandescent bulb produces 1600 lumens
A 60 Watt H4 headlight bulb produces about 800 lumens
A LED H4 headlight bulb produces about 1080 lumens
No reference to waste heat produced, direct brightness-to-brightness comparisons.
If you have skipped the previous section, this is where you rejoin…
For us, 1080 lumens is the starting point. An aftermarket H4 LED headlight bulb. An easy but illegal retrofit - especially if you go for one of the low profile ones that doesn’t have the bulky cooling fan extension out the back…. A 20% increase in brightness compared to the OEM tungsten filament bulb.
It is illegal to fit a LED H4 bulb into a reflector/lens designed for a Tungsten-Halogen H4 bulb. But still, people do it.
More light, less heat, less current drawn which can be usefully used to power your usb chargers, heated handlebar grips and/or your heated underwear……….
So, to update the lighting on your bike there are a number of steps you can take. Not all of these will conform to DOT or EU homologation requirements. If you live in a jurisdiction that has particularly strict annual technical inspections, you might have difficulty getting your annual MoT, TuV or whatever. Here in BC we are fortunate that technical inspection regime is somewhat lax…
But, responsible motorcyclists that we are, we are of course careful to avoid using high intensity lights in a manner that will dazzle and temporarily blind other road users - aren’t we?
In preparation for the 24Hr event next year, a systematic approach to uprating your bike’s lighting would be sensible, perhaps?
Step 1. Uprate your stock headlight bulb? Unless your bike already has LED projector headlights, this might be where you start.
Step 2. Fit “auxiliary riding lights”. A 4x4 light bar may not work but suitable lights are available through the usual aftermarket sources. If you wire them in, using the high beam +ve lead as the trigger to a power relay running the lights wired directly onto the battery, you will have auxiliary lights that only come on with high beam
Step 3. Helmet-mounted lights. This is perhaps the most avant-garde approach you can take. If also driven off a power relay triggered by the high beam wire, it will only come on when the headlight is on high beam.
I have three different examples of headlights to try.
A single LED, rechargeable camping-hiking headlight by FENIX rated at 1200 lumens maximum
a twin LED helmet system by Oxbow rated at 2100 lumens maximum
and
a three LED helmet light sold by Full On lighting in Victoria BC that is rated at 6000 lumens maximum.
Having written this piece as an introduction, outlining the general principles and the legal framework, the next chapter will be a side-by-side comparison of these three examples as they stand (the Full On 6000 Lu example is still at a motorcycle version prototype stage).
Bring the dark nights on!
Jdb
2/11/25
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