[Closed] Homemade reflective stickers?

I just used tyres with reflective stripes on the sidewalls.

If you do your own, try to use retroreflectives as they direct light back to the source rather than bouncing it away at an opposing angle.

I've got some 3m straw things on my spokes. Super reflective from the side and as they move are quite prominent.

Do they rattle?

No, no rattle at all. fit & forget really

I've got some black normally/reflective under light type tape. It's covering the mudguards and gives a bit of view from 45degrees ish, then some more I need to put on the rim. Last time I did it worked well ( bike got nicked)

Haven't Volvo produced some kind of spray-on scotchlite type stuff?

I have a canondale badboy commuter which is Matt black and has black reflective stickers. [url= http://http://www.flickriver.com/photos/tags/cannondalebadboy8ultracannondalebadboy8ultra/interesting/ ]badboy 8[/url] You can barely see them in the day but the light up really well when a light hits them. I tried to home make some for my newly powder coated white cove stiffee but couldn't find an off cut of the right white material. I have since found some but not got round to it. I designed the stickers based on the original cove font but redesigned it partly for looks and partly to make it easy to cut at home with a Stanley knife and ruler. There is a sticker company locally who would of cut from my cad design but again they didn't have the correct material. It would of been around £5 if they had the material so it may be worth ringing round some local sticker shops. One piece of advice I read was to try and find somewhere that apply the reflective stickers on police cars or ambulances. They should have loads of off cuts or be able to cut them from stock.

Yes Volvo did something called life proof or life paint,

Those reflective spoke straws are very effective, they sell them in Tesco now as well as Halfords,
I've put Schwalbe Marathon Plus on my road going bike, they have the reflective strip around the sidewall, my wife bought me an Altura Fluro yellow Night Vision jacket "to wear in the day" I look a bit speshul in it, something that I was going to mention in another thread on here, Anyway these jackets are available at half price almost everywhere now and are reflective from all angles. In fact I think it's visible from the moon.

And my all time favourite, Ye olde Pedal reflectors, not visible from the side granted but they are effective,

The Volvo paint is useless and only for fabrics.

The 3m spoke straw things are fantastic. All our commuter bikes have them - when you ride it looks like a big spinning reflective hoop. Being a complete tube they are visible from a big range of angles (i.e. also show up clearly to a car driving behind you).

They should really be made legal to replace those stupid plastic wheel reflectors.

Aldi sell them from time to time, also Tesco, Rose bikes and probably plenty of other places.

36 in a box so up to you if you want one or two boxes.

http://www.rosebikes.co.uk/article/3m-spoke-reflectors-sekuclip/aid:319131

As above I also have the reflective spoke straw things. They were only a couple of squid from Aldi and they make such a difference to side visability. Well worth the £££. I bought spares but haven't needed them and they have been on a couple of years. Only problem is they are loose on the spokes so it's like having spokey dokies with the noise they make at low speed until centrifugal force takes over. I'll post a pic tomorrow when I get to work

Double post

Cheers everyone. I have ordered some tape, but will get some straws. If they rattle, you aint going fast enough! Sideway traffic is probably our biggest risk.

On a positive note based on 20 years of commuting, I always get respect from drivers if I am lit up and keep my lights on non lighthouse settings. There seems to be a fashion for full on lights from bikes and cars that actually blind on coming traffic/ bikes. That not to mention the idiots with flashing front lights.

[quote=rocky mountain ]Our big weakness is someone not seeing us from the side.

In what way do retroreflectives help with this? Think about it for a minute - who is it you're trying to get to see you from the side? The obvious one is drivers approaching (or waiting at) a side junction when you're riding along a more major road. So at what point do you enter their headlight beam in order to make the retroreflectives useful?

The thing is, you don't need them to see you when you're directly in front of them - it's too late at that point, because if they've not seen you by that point they'll already be moving and it's too late for them to stop. You need them to see you when you're at an angle to them and not in the beam of their headlights.

Sure there's nothing wrong with improving your visibility, but don't expect that retroreflectives for side visibility will make a significant difference.

I disagree. My reflective are quite noticeable even under street lights and car headlights from an angle. The spoke reflectors are even lit up from my front light.

Noticeable if you're looking maybe as you'll get some scatter, but the point of retroreflectives is they reflect light back in the direction it's come from, so your front light illuminating them for example is only useful if your front light is almost directly between you and the reflector - probably the case for you as a rider, not so for a driver (the same applies to streetlights - as you pass under them you'll get retroreflection back at you, but drivers won't get that because there will never be a straight line between their eyes, the streetlight and the reflector).

I thought similar but a friend and I swapped bikes on the way home from work not long after I put the spoke reflectors on. I went on ahead at a few junctions just to see what they looked like as I thought they probably looked better from my perspective than any other direction. They worked very well even with minimal light hitting them. From the side at all the junctions we tried and at slow speeds the wheels looked like a solid disk of light. They are 3m reflective material though so pretty high quality stuff. I don't disagree with them primarily bouncing light back in the direction it came from though. I'm just saying they worked very well and better than I expected having a basic knowledge of reflection.

I bought some of the spoke things from Aldi but only kept them on for a month or so. They got really grimey too easily (unsuprising when off-roading) which made them look extra 5h1t and meant they didn't work that great. The grime clogged up inside them around the spokes. Naff.

[url= http://zeitbike.com/brands/fiks/fiks-reflective.html ]http://zeitbike.com/brands/fiks/fiks-reflective.html[/url]

[img] [/img]

I did it a while ago. Worked out really well. Just used a new wheel sticker as a template and cut them out.
[URL= http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d187/Inferno182/IMG_20140309_134718_zps26ddbb51.jp g" target="_blank">http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d187/Inferno182/IMG_20140309_134718_zps26ddbb51.jp g"/> [/IMG][/URL]
[URL= http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d187/Inferno182/IMG_20140309_134727_zpsa7940626.jp g" target="_blank">http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d187/Inferno182/IMG_20140309_134727_zpsa7940626.jp g"/> [/IMG][/URL]

[i]In what way do retroreflectives help with this? Think about it for a minute - who is it you're trying to get to see you from the side?[/i]

Any faster junction with good sight lines, most roundabouts etc. Plenty of occasions a bit of side visibility is a life safer, its not just 90 degree T junctions. And the whole poinnt of retroreflectives is they direct back to the source so even if the car is angled away from the bike, any part of the headlight throw that reaches the bike (or light from streetlights/shops/other cars near the driver) will be reflected back to the driver.

The battenburgs they put on Police Cars are designed to meet a regulation where the car has be be clearly visible at 500 metres on an unlit road and in poor conditions, good enough for police, good enough for bikes.