Originally Posted by
spare_wheel
situational awareness.
i am fairly certain that i feel safer wearing black and biking sans lights than you lot do wearing hi viz and lit up like xmas trees.
Anyone intelligent enough to use the term "situational awareness", is too intelligent as to make such an inane statement as this.
Originally Posted by
acidfast7
I don't think Hi-Viz is useful. I never saw in on the continent but everyone in the UK uses it. Most people in Germany usually cycle in black or dark colours.
Anyone with the candlepower to be hired as an expatriate worker in a STEM career is likewise much too intelligent to be making statements like the above.
I can't tell anyone what or how to
feel, but I can suggest that perhaps they are missing the point: is it better to 'feel' safer or is it better to BE safer? Try reporting for work as a highway flagger without your hi-viz and see where you get. Just because German cyclists don't wear hi-viz... I mean... they don't wear helmets either, for the most part... does that mean that these things are truly not useful, or is it that they are maybe not that useful in GERMANY, where there are stiff penalties for motorists that maul cyclists because "they didn't see them... " In the U.S. and U.K., drivers are held to much less of an account for their actions. Cyclists have fought back against the mounting CARNAGE by doing what they can, to be more visible. Is that such a bad thing? Really? Is it so bad to want to take some steps to tip the odds in your favour (sic) at night. Or even in the daylight. Being contrarian only works when there isn't anyone around as smart or smarter, who can call you on it. It also isn't cool to be contrarian when the issue is a life and death one.
H