Originally Posted by ItsJustMe

I've never found those to be particularly effective. For one thing, reflective anything is great but it relies on being lit by the lights on the car that's approaching, and that's pretty good for front and rear, it clearly is not very effective for side lighting - you're only in the headlights of an approaching car that is actually a danger to you (IE is travelling towards you fast enough to hit you before you clear it) for a moment - I haven't done the math but I'd guess that the window of where an approaching car could see you in the headlights early enough to actually stop before they hit you would be very small.

Also, in my limited experience with Marathons with reflective sidewalls, the reflective bit gets so dirty that I can't effectively clean it off without rubbing it off the tire within a few months of buying the tires. The reflective sidewalls worked for maybe 2 or 3 months out of the 2 years I had those tires, then they were just covered with grime and brake dust and junk and when I tried to clean it, it wouldn't come clean unless I scrubbed it so hard that I was taking the reflective stuff off.