One click too far

[fredintoon]

I've turned it to the parking light a few times by accident but never left it to where the battery went dead. First time I did it I thought, "Now what prompted someone to add this feature?" There's gotta be a story behind it.

Hi mstic,
some decades ago in the UK you had to leave a tail light on when parked in the street after dark. Perhaps in some jurisdictions you still do?

[psycoreefer]

if there are still areas that require that I sure hope those guys have gone LED, I don't think my battery would keep the tails lit all night long, let alone have enough to start the bike in the morning. man, talk about hard on batteries!

[xs11jack]

The tail light on feature is the Yamaha version of a car's four way flashers.
Ole Jack

[barberad]

The tail light on feature is the Yamaha version of a car's four way flashers.
Ole Jack

The XJ has a four way flasher switch on the right side of the handle bars. It also has a P1 and P2 on the ignition switch.

[Brian_D]

My son phoned, his bike wouldn't start after he'd parked it overnight and used the steering lock for the first time ever so it'd be more stable on the sidestand with a cover over it.
"One click too far!" I cried.
"Duh?"
"The last little leftward click on the key turns on the rear light, you have run the battery flat."
"What (expletive deleted) genius dreamed that up?"
"It's a safety feature."
He then used combinations of bad words in denigration of that feature that amazed me, followed by "Can I borrow your battery charger?"
I told him, "Yeah, sure. It could have been worse, you could have been 200 miles from home like I was when I did it."
So, how many have actually used the lock+parking light feature on purpose, rather than running the battery flat by accident?

+1 on both the misguided use of the steering lock AND the expletives that followed. Will be "rebuilding" the ignition locks on all three bikes and eliminating that possibility.

[planedick]

For those

who have a hard time trying to get the lock feature to work. It is necessary to push the key down in the off position then release before turning to the left for the lock position otherwise it will not turn left.