Reflective Paint
- Thread starter galaxy1
- Start date
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I am amazed that it took 8 pages before Magnatom came forth with the reason why there are so many smidsys with drivers pulling out from side turnings = the cyclist is not illuminated unless the cars headlights are on them, and as the car is pointing at the kerb on the opposite side of the road, and the drivers eyes are acclimatised to viewing the road before them under the brightness of either Halogen or HID headlights, most else outside this vanishes into darkness.
If reflective or high viz are being used, it needs to be illuminated to be of any value, and if you cannot rely upon a car pulling out to do this, then there is nothing to say you cannot provide this light source yourself - yet another clever British invention
http://www.lightrider.co.uk/
If reflective or high viz are being used, it needs to be illuminated to be of any value, and if you cannot rely upon a car pulling out to do this, then there is nothing to say you cannot provide this light source yourself - yet another clever British invention
http://www.lightrider.co.uk/
Wolf04
New Member
- Location
- Wallsend on Tyne
Sorry while I have great respect for your opinion Mike, I'm truly baffled by the above comment. What could possibly be wrong with being able to see a cyclist from 3/4 mile? What is the alternative? To be invisible? A cyclist wearing Hi-viz is more visible period! Does that make them safer..probably.BentMikey said:
BentMikey
Rider of Seolferwulf
- Location
- South London
OK, let's take it to an extreme that's effectively no different. Is there any point in seeing a cyclist from 50 miles away?
BentMikey said:
Yes you could say hi to other cyclechat members if you could see that far (not so difficult in London of course!)
Talking about how far away you can see them is a slight red herring. What is important is when the cyclist is off axis and in the drivers peripheral vision. Yellow is much more visible than black!
Another situation that I noticed this morning, was where a cyclist was in front of a car coming towards me. He had good lights, but the car behind had better and to some extent it would be possible to miss the cyclists lights in the glare of the cars. Cars in general tend to be grey/black/blue. The cyclist today had a yellow jacket on and so was visible to me. If he had black on he would not have been as visible. This could be important where a car wants to cut across approaching traffic thinks he sees a gap only to find that a hidden cyclist is there.
It shouldn't happen, but it could.
BentMikey
Rider of Seolferwulf
- Location
- South London
The point being that cyclists are already more than visible enough. Wearing hiviz or wearing black makes no difference to the rate of smidsy's I experience.
Arch
Married to Night Train
- Location
- Salford, UK
linfordlunchbox said:I am amazed that it took 8 pages before Magnatom came forth with the reason why there are so many smidsys with drivers pulling out from side turnings = the cyclist is not illuminated unless the cars headlights are on them, and as the car is pointing at the kerb on the opposite side of the road, and the drivers eyes are acclimatised to viewing the road before them under the brightness of either Halogen or HID headlights, most else outside this vanishes into darkness.
If reflective or high viz are being used, it needs to be illuminated to be of any value, and if you cannot rely upon a car pulling out to do this, then there is nothing to say you cannot provide this light source yourself - yet another clever British invention
http://www.lightrider.co.uk/
I suggested this a while back and was met with a wall of derision. I was suggesting carrying an extra light on the bars, shining back on myself, rather than buying the special one. A few people said they reckoned it would make no difference, and said it wouldn't highlight reflectives because of the angle. I seem to remember BM was one of them, although as he's done in this thread he seemed to be arguing that it wouldn't be as useful as good lights, whereas of course, like the folk in this thread, I was suggesting it AS WELL AS, not INSTEAD OF...
I did try it out, and a couple of friends said it was a little more visible than without from the front, but I was only using a small single LED to shine back on myself. Alongside two foreward facing lights, two rear lights, a helmet rear light, reflectors and a hi-vis vest. Also, it was in fairly brightly street lit conditions, and I think would be more effective on a dark road.
BM, if you really can't see the point of seeing a cyclist (or any other road user) as soon as possible, I start to wonder about your sanity.
Maz
Guru
As I understand it (maybe I'm wrong), the anti-hiviz argument is that hi-viz wearers like me put too much faith in our hiviz garments for keeping us safe on the roads. This argument is flawed in that it assumes we somehow forget or dismiss the importance of road positioning, eye contact etc (i.e. cyclecraft). IMHO Hi-viz is a supplement to good road sense, not a substitute.col said:Bright colours are generally better seen than dark,i dont understand the argument against this
BentMikey said:
How do you know? How many SMIDSY's wouldn't be a SMIDSY if you were wearing bright yellow. How could you measure that. There may have been numerous occasions where a driver has seen me because of my yellow jacket when they otherwise wouldn't. They would therefore react accordingly and I wouldn't notice that I was almost SMIDSY'ed.
Yellow is more visible than black under poor light conditions in urban areas. From my experience and taking into account the small amount of science I know of in this area, I think it is a fact that yellow is more visible than black/blue/grey in poor urban light conditions.
(of course I am defining SMIDSY here as accidental)
BentMikey said:
Some are, most aren't. Many commuters regard themselves as 2 wheeled pedestrians (no lights, or crap green LEDs, on the pavement at junctions etc RLJ etc), and those of use who do take a responsible approach to cycling end up being treated with the same contempt which they deserve
BentMikey
Rider of Seolferwulf
- Location
- South London
Col, you may think you're not guilty of risk compensation, but you are. Simply cycling and wearing your hiviz makes you a risk compensator.
Both helmets and hiviz are red herrings from a safety point of view, and I believe both are harmful to cycling's public image as they help to encourage the perception of cycling being dangerous. That means fewer cyclists on the road, and THAT has a huge effect on our collective safety. There's a further negative effect on safety from both via risk compensation, and I think that both these effects slightly outweigh the positives overall.
Just look how many topics there are of cyclists complaining that drivers didn't see them and they were wearing HiViz. Hiviz doesn't help this cyclist at all:
In the end, long debates about helmets and hiviz are a waste of effort. It's not going to make much difference whether you do or don't wear them in your cycling. If we all spent the effort instead on making sure our cycle craft was good via lessons and video review on here, the collective improvement in safety would be several orders of magnitude greater than you could possibly achieve with helmets and hiviz together, even working at their assumed very best possible.
Both helmets and hiviz are red herrings from a safety point of view, and I believe both are harmful to cycling's public image as they help to encourage the perception of cycling being dangerous. That means fewer cyclists on the road, and THAT has a huge effect on our collective safety. There's a further negative effect on safety from both via risk compensation, and I think that both these effects slightly outweigh the positives overall.
Just look how many topics there are of cyclists complaining that drivers didn't see them and they were wearing HiViz. Hiviz doesn't help this cyclist at all:
In the end, long debates about helmets and hiviz are a waste of effort. It's not going to make much difference whether you do or don't wear them in your cycling. If we all spent the effort instead on making sure our cycle craft was good via lessons and video review on here, the collective improvement in safety would be several orders of magnitude greater than you could possibly achieve with helmets and hiviz together, even working at their assumed very best possible.
BentMikey said:
I'm not guilty of risk compensation. Can you prove that I am?
How can you say this conversation is a wasted effort? Visibility is a priority in cycling and is right up there with road position and cyclecraft. As others have pointed out we are vulnerable, we don't have a cage around us, so we need all the help we can get to avoid collisions. Visibility plays a part in that. So discussions like this are very relevant.
Part of my job is running functional MRI research, where we want to answer questions about how the brain functions. A lot of this work is clinically based, however, I do work with psychologists as well. I am tempted to chat with some of the visual perception psychologists to see if they would be interested in doing a project in hazard perception in peripheral vision of cyclists with and without hi-viz jackets. If I had the time that is.
My feeling would be that on a conscience level where a driver can tell you he has seen a cyclist there would be little or no difference in brain activation, and in the way the driver would react. However, where a cyclist appears in the peripheral vision and the driver couldn't tell you if they had seen a cyclist or not. I would hypothesis that recognition areas would be active more where the cyclist was wearing yellow compared to grey/black.
Now it might be suggested that detecting something unconsciously would not affect a drivers actions. However, from what I know of psychology (not a huge amount) this is not the case. It might spur the driver to hesitate, or to look again. Any psychologists on here?
Anyway thats the science out of the way.
If you want to be seen (better) wear bright colours (i.e. yellow) not grey!
