to increase visibility
With autumn and winter around the bend, I took steps to be better seen in the dark hours while commuting to work. Being seen is being safe(ish) in traffic. The sooner you are spotted in the dark, the better drivers can react to you.
Avoid dark clothing, they reflect not enough light to make you stand out from the darkness all around. Dark clothing at night is like camouflage.
Use reflectors on your bike and clothing at the very least. From the first picture you can see, how little light is reflected from the backpack as compared to the hi-vis-strips.
Lights improve being spotted immensely. Not to mention you yourself can see the road better. With the current generation of LED lights, battery power or dynamo hubs, there is really no excuse left not to use them.
Don't assume street lights are enough make you visible!

Anyhow, I butchered a hi-vis vest to fix the reflective strips on the compression straps on my back pack. Now those straps on the front of my backpack are special, since they are meant to carry a snowboard, but I'm pretty sure this concept will work for any backpack with compression straps on the side.
My cutting and sewing is not the most sophisticated work, but it turned out well enough. All I did was cut the reflective strips with enough of the yellow fabric to fold it over on it's own and then sew the length together to form a long tube. Turn it inside out, so the seam is hidden inside and that's it.
For compression straps two simple cuts would do to thread the straps through the tube.
Check whether you got the reflective bits on the outside, before mounting it though, because I messed this up for one strip.


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