Motorcycle headlights are generally pretty flaccid, sorry things to start with, but when you lean a bike over into a corner, things get a lot worse. Unless you're riding something like the BMW K1600GT – still one of the only bikes on the market to rock self-leveling headlights – the second you tip into a corner, the headlight dives downward on the side you're heading toward, plunging it into darkness and leaving you to feel the road by violent braille. Or slow down, I guess, if you're into that sort of thing.
There are few aftermarket fixes for this; we tested J.W. Speaker's aftermarket cornering headlight a couple of years ago, which avoided mechanical self-leveling by having an array of extra LED lights up each side that fire off sequentially as you lean the bike further over. Not a bad solution, if you're riding something with a 7-inch headlight bucket.
Most of us aren't, which is why this gadget is so exciting. The ALLight (Always Level Light) is a super-simple headlight bulb replacement for H4, H7 or H11 type bulbs that transforms any headlight into a self-leveling, super bright projector beam.
It's a simple enough device; a projector beam headlight mounted to a small electric motor that's able to stabilize the headlight on the roll axis, much like the kind of arrangement you'd find in a camera stabilizing gimbal, except without the necessity to stabilize along three axes. As it's a projector beam and throws the light forward and not backwards, it doesn't matter what headlight reflector you put it into.
Since it's never going to flick up and blind oncoming motorists, the ALLight team says it's possible to run super-bright LEDs that are the same brightness for low beam as high beam, dramatically improving visibility even in a straight line, while obviously making an even bigger difference in corners.
On an H4 bulb, which would cover a lot of bikes, installation is as simple as replacing a bulb. For H7 and H11 bulbs, you'll likely have to pull the headlight off and take off the headlight cover.
At US$150 a pop, they ain't a cheap thing to throw on your motorcycle – unless you compare them to any other self-leveling headlight solution out there, in which case they're very, very cheap.
We wonder how the simple gimbal system will handle the vibrations, bumps and rigors of daily motorcycle use. Mind you, if the motor breaks down, the worst that's going to happen is you'll have headlights as bad as your current ones but brighter.
I think this is a brilliant idea, if you'll excuse the pun. There's no excuse for the patently rubbish, borderline dangerous headlights manufacturers ship bikes with these days. Motorcycles have been around for just about bang on 150 years at this point and the fact that this is still an issue should be an embarrassment to the industry.
At this stage there's 25 days to go on the Kickstarter campaign, and it's had just about zero publicity from the looks of things, but we sincerely hope it gets up. If it does, and everything goes to plan, deliveries are slated for February 2019.
Check out the pitch video below.
Source: ALLight Kickstarter