what to do for visibility to the sides?
What do you do to ensure maximum visibility to motorists encountering you from the sides?
Reflective tape works pretty well when the car's lights are shining directly at the bike, but not as well when a car is at more oblique angles to the bike. For example, a driver at a stop sign almost turned into me when she stopped with her car turned about halfway through her right turn onto the road was riding on. In this case her lights were pointed well away from me, and if she didn't see my front lights she would have proceeded to turn right into me. I use a pair of bright flashlights as front lights, but they have a pretty tight beam so she probably didn't see them very well (until I turned a bit to point them at her). I'd like to avoid situations like this in the future.
My thoughts so far are;
1) absolutely cover the bike with reflective tape (so much for aesthetics, oh well)
2) use very bright front lights with lots of side-spill
I'm curious if anyone has encountered side-facing lights, and whether these would be a good idea.