irc wrote:MartinC wrote:Why don't we have hi viz cars? Always intrerested to see the promoters of hi viz answers to this.
Less need. Cars other than junctions cars are traveling in separate lanes at similar speeds. On rural roads the closing speed of a car catching up with another car may be 5 or 10mph. Plenty of time. With bikes the closing speed could be 50mph.
Also cars are big and in the centre of lanes. Easy to see. What's the frontal area of a cyclist compared to a car? Which is most likely to be hidden by a door pillar?
Anyway isn't the use of daylight running lights in some places the car equivelent of HiViz? So it is promoted in some places.
I'd disagree in some respects, actually. Car closing speeds are faster, for one thing.
I now have (not my choice, but out of necessity) a black car. My previous one was red (again, not my choice). There is a very noticeable difference in how other cars react between the two cars. Given the choice, I'd always pick a red one. Other drivers consistently gave the red one more space. And other vehicles, lorries especially, seem regularly to drift right in their lane towards the black one as I overtake on the motorway, which is most disconcerting; it very rarely happened with the red one. It's almost like they are sucked towards me.
As a cyclist I try to be easily seen. This very evening after dark I noticed that a lot of cyclists on the 'footpath' cycle track I drove past who were wearing yellowish jackets were much less obvious than those wearing just a few small reflective strips. I think that in the dark, it's more noticable to have reflective strips than high viz, unless the high viz is also very reflective. I also noticed that several cyclists had much brighter front lights than back lights. Of course, they might need bright front lights when turning across traffic, or if part of their route was unlit, but my concern was that because of all the other lights around, some of the back lights didn't show up very well in the street/car lighting. As other lights get brighter, it starts a spiral where bike lights need to be brighter to stand out, not a good thing in my opinion, as in the end anything unlit, like pedestrians, becomes virtually invisible.