Originally Posted by
GrouchoWretch
A more serious question: Suppose someone throws a couple of those black milk crates in the road and leaves them there, or a Herman Miller Aeron Chair in Sit-for-Less True Black. Are you telling me that you are powerless to avoid colliding with these objects if they're in your way? If so, I might suggest that you're overdriving your headlights or maybe following the next vehicle too closely, something like that. Yeah? Or no?
Something in the middle of the road would cast more shadows within the headlight beams and so would give more of an indication that something wasn't right. Depending on just what is at the side of the road, something very dark at the side of the road is more likely to disappear into the general "stuff" there - parked cars, hedges, whatever. It won't cast such a giveaway shadow.
That aside I'm sure you'd agree that if someone threw a completely black milk crate in the road you'd be closer to it before you saw it than if they threw a luminous yellow crate in the same road having covered it with reflective tape, no?