Hypno Toad

Interesting stuff, and from a car company - Volvo (I own two).

fietsbob

I wear a Bright Neon Lime yellow-green parka or sweatshirt with wide reflective bands on it .

I apply it by putting the clothing On.

Want your Bike frame to reflect headlights ? apply the tape or have a HALO powder coat job done
its is functionally like the stuff you see on the Road stripes , but in a heat melted Glazing material..

scroca

I need something I can spray all over my skin for those hot summers when I want to go shirtless.

RidingMatthew

i think that is creative and why not. more people thinking outside the box the better for all road users.

-has owned 2 Volvos as well-

spare_wheel

Edit should be merged with thread on A&S.

TransitBiker

Do want!!!

- Andy

Hypno Toad

Sorry, I ran a search, but must have made a mistake... soooooo many threads.

Darth Lefty 

Weekly application of gray sludge to my bike and clothes? Pass

ThermionicScott 

A couple Facebook friends have forwarded that on to me. I wouldn't mind spraying it on my bike, but I'm less enthusiastic about spraying it on my clothes. Volvo has always been forward-thinking on safety, which is cool.

acidfast7

am I the only person that thought about using this on private parts or has that been done already?

could make for some interesting performance art with strobing car headlights against a black background

or am I just

ThermionicScott 

Very Eurotrash of you.

Here in 'Murica, we're to be ashamed of our bodies, and we throw people in jail and put them on scary lists if they are naked in public...

TenSpeedV2

Yep, I can see myself spraying that on a $700 set of wheels.

acidfast7

I do miss the nude beaches in the middle of Munich and Vienna.

Hypno Toad

This product offer to expand the number of options, that's a good thing, right?

My daughter is 23 years old and lives car-free. She's very into the 'look' of her bikes and was pissed at me for adding reflective tape to her spokes (picture below). As a loving/protective dad, I'd love to coat her bikes in this stuff when she's storing off-season bikes at my house.

spivonious

I'm intrigued, but wonder how long it lasts and how much it costs. Reflective fabric and tape is pretty cheap.

Coluber42

I've said this other places. But I'm a bit skeptical of the motivation here, seeing as it's coming from a car company. Don't get me wrong, it's a cool product with potentially some cool uses. And I'm all for extra reflective stuff, visibility, etc.

But I don't really see the masses spraying themselves down every couple of weeks with this stuff, and who knows what the long term effects of inhaling it might be if you actually did spray yourself with it all the time.

Also, coming from a car company, it looks like just another way of shifting responsibility away from drivers and onto anyone else using the road. Maybe it's helpful to have on more reflective gear, but let's not forget that it's entirely reasonable to expect a driver to *be able* to see a bicyclist who has good front and rear lights and nothing else, well enough to avoid hitting them. And visibility is not the only issue. I wonder how many times a driver says "that guy just came out of nowhere" when in reality, the person was just driving too fast to be able to respond to road conditions.
For a car company to really be "forward thinking" with regard to cyclist safety, they should be marketing a car whose selling features are that it minimizes blind spots, has a short hood, turn signals on the sides as well as the front and back, and not too wide. They should encourage people to slow down, especially in the city (yeah, like a car company will do that).

But rather than ask drivers to take responsibility for their actions, it's easier to just spray reflective gunk all over everyone else. Then clearly if a cyclist gets hit by a driver with a dirty windshield, cataracts, and a cell phone who was speeding, it's clearly the cyclists fault for not being sprayed from head to toe with reflective.

dynaryder

^^^+1 to everything he said. We had a woman run down in MD and one of the driver's claims was she didn't have a light or reflective material. But her rear blinky was found at the scene,still on,and she had been wearing a reflective vest. Being visible also doesn't help a driver looking across their hood and figuring they've got enough room to pass,when they're actually going to almost clip you with their mirror,something I've had happen to me in broad daylight on numerous occasions.

acidfast7

it's not coming from a car company ... it's just a rebranded product

Darth Lefty 

Volvo of old really meant it about safety. A few years before the end, they had a program where they were investigating every single fatality in or from a Volvo with the goal of totally eliminating them by some tangibly close future date. They were pioneers in a lot of safety technology taken for granted now or resisted by the industry. I don't know if Volvo of today with its Chinese owners still has the same focus. Since this seems to be a rebranded horse product that puts the onus on people outside of cars to inconvenience themselves and uglify themselves and their property for the sake of drivers, I guess they are trying, but don't quite get it.

bmthom.gis

Nope. No thank you. I defer to BSNYC on this product:

"Speaking of things that should be pranks but aren't, yesterday I talked about Volvo's insulting new anti-death spray, and a reader has since forwarded this post which clears things up a bit:

Volvo’s new spray is transparent and reflective. During the day, it’s invisible but at night, it lights up when headlights appear. Cyclists and even street walkers can spray LifePaint on their bikes and clothes before heading out at night.

Ah, so it's a marketing tool for prostitutes.

Now I get it.

Also:

What’s even more fantastic about it? It washes off and it won’t stain!

Wait a minute. If it washes off, then what happens when it rains? Do you just become invisible again and leave an iridescent pee puddle behind? "


AND:

"My first thought was, 'How do we know this isn't carcinogenic?'

My second thought was, 'Maybe they tested it on animals.'

My third thought was, 'Holy ****, we're the test animals.'"

Andy_K 

A can of that stuff just sold for $180 on eBay.