work4bike

So many studies out there; there's a study for every one If you like helmets, there's a study for you; if you don't like helmets, there's a study for you...


https://www.bicycling.com/bikes-gear...e3195e9e5e3ecd

Maelochs

Highly visible clothing has no visible impact on impacts.

I guess it is harder to hit what you can't see.

is there a study for people who don't like hi-viz helmets?

noisebeam

garbage in, garbage out. if one read the full article that is the conclusion.

Rollfast

Carry an Italian girl on the back and you will be highly visible.

canklecat

The notion that safety equipment -- helmets, hi-vis clothing, etc. -- is somehow associated with higher risk is useless without better studies. Some incomplete studies presume that safety equipment somehow tempts cyclists to take greater risks, or that hi-vis clothing and helmets are like waving a red cape in front of a bull.

All of these studies are worse than useless without a reliable baseline. That would begin with mandatory psychological screening of all applicants for driving licenses and renewals of existing licenses.

The primary focus of pre-licensing psych evals would be to identify tendencies toward passive-aggressive behaviors: brush-by passes when there was plenty of room to pass safely, cutting off drivers who signal in plenty of time, speeding up when they see a pedestrian "jaywalking", etc. Similar tests already exist to screen job applicants for warehouse and retail jobs to weed out applicants who are most likely to steal.

The current licensing system is based around a paradigm of presumption that if someone can drive within a minimal standard for technical competency under controlled conditions that they will automatically drive safely under all conditions, particularly conditions beyond their competency level. Clearly this isn't adequate.

Psychological screening would help establish a baseline for evaluating against later moving violations and accidents, and could benefit drivers who test well to lower insurance rates.

Waiting until after an incident/collision to test is too late. Drivers will be constrained by attorneys against answering questions, or coached to respond a certain way that scores well on ethical driving tests. The time to impose more rigorous screening is at the beginning, and whenever licenses are up for renewal to re-evaluate life stresses.

Otherwise it's anyone's guess whether and why hi-vis clothing, reflectors, lights, etc., seem to work or not to work.

Maelochs

That post deserves to end the thread ... but there is no "Like" button, and I want very much to say I think that post makes altogether too much sense for this site .... so I have to soil the scene with another post. Sorry.

Get a "Like" button, Mods, and maybe I would post less.

Rollfast

But if you don't like it, what then? This is Arguments & Stuff, after all.

work4bike

I think what this article illustrates is how agendas or biases can affect studies, both from the ones involved in the studies (and of course the entities that finance them) and those that consume the data.


P.S. I was kind of surprised at how many studies have been done on this issue of wearing hi-viz clothing.

Kontact

There are lots of studies about human perception because it keeps surprising us by not working the way we think. "Eye witnesses", the gorilla in the room study, etc. Attaching a public safety issue to a perception study gets funding.


Part of the problem with this kind of study is that not that many cyclists are actually getting hit, and we don't know how many times accidents have been averted by unknown factors. It is all a lot like studying people that get hit by lightning.

njkayaker

https://www.moneysupermarket.com/car...ash-by-colour/

Kontact

Yet another study that presumes that the color was predictive of visibility and not driver behavior.

njkayaker

Not exactly.

The study showed a correlation between color and collisions.

It isn't unreasonable to expect that there is a causal relationship due to visibility.

It's also well-known that driver behavior correlates to collisions. (The study isn't looking at that but isn't denying it either).

Is it reasonable to expect that the choice between white and black cars is significantly correlated with, respectively, good and bad drivers?

squirtdad

I have a basic assumption: The more visible I am to drivers, the less likely I am to get hit by one

This assumption is confirmed by my personal observation: When I drive I can see cyclists wearing hi-vis, with reflectors and with bright blinking lights much more easily and sooner than those without the visibility aids

Therefore I wear hi-vis mostly, use a lot of lights and have put extra reflective tape on my bikes.

Not scientific, but works for me

I also drive with my lights on all the time, for 40 plus hears of driving, based on a) when i started my dad insisted and b) observation that in all situations cars with lights on are easier for other drivers to see

ymmv

Kontact

Yes, it is reasonable to expect that driver's aggressiveness is displayed not just in their driving style but in the color of car they prefer.

It is also reasonable to assume that some colors are easier to see than others.


What is unreasonable is to take a study that doesn't differentiate between the two and presume that the results reflect more one factor or the other.

njkayaker

What I linked to didn't make that presumption.

The article I linked to suggested that their was a correlation between color and "bad" drivers.

Kontact

I'm not saying it didn't. I'm saying that no useful information about car color and visibility can be gleaned from a study that doesn't quantify the difference between visibility and behavior. Would a visibility study be useful if it turned out that 95% of the time the color was linked to behavior, not visibility?


I would be interesting to look at intersection traffic camera tickets for car color, corrected for how common different colors are. That would give an idea about aggressive driving and color without any human input, like whether police like to pull over one color or another.


But overall, the study demonstrates nothing aside from color somehow being predictive of relative collision rates. Outside that it isn't useful, unless people want to point to more bad science to affirm their bias.

Skipjacks

Some things don't need to be studied.

High vis clothing makes me more likely to be seen. That makes me less likely to be run over.

Until someone makes an interesting argument that the high vis clothing attracts cars to me I'm not entertaining the idea that high visibility is a bad idea.

Kontact

The usual arguments offered are that drivers tend to give cyclists who look like they know what they are doing less clearance. And there does seem to be something to this.

But that doesn't mean that a vest wouldn't save your life the one time it did alert a driver who would otherwise not have seen you.

noisebeam

apparently no one read the article

Skipjacks

This.

Except honestly....as a car driver I notice lights on a bike LONG before I notice bright colors.

As a driver, bright colors really only come into play at night. Those day glo yellow shirts are easier to see at night in ambient street lighting. In the daytime, lights on a bike do more than a bright shirt will. And the whole bike and rider is so well lit up in the sunlight that I'm not sure high vis clothing helps a lot.

BUT!!!! I doesn't hurt like the 'study' says.

Milton Keynes

You've convinced me. From now on I'm painting my bike grey and wearing only asphalt grey clothing while cycling. Also going to take off all reflectors and lights, because obviously they don't prevent accidents.

njkayaker

That might not be true. From the study, it seems a particular driver picking a white (more visible) car over a black car would still be a rational choice. They might not be safer but it doesn't seem likely they'd be less safe.

That doesn't seem likely.

Milton Keynes

Exactly. We don't know how many near-accidents might have happened but were averted because the cyclists were wearing brightly colored clothing. Nor do we know how many accidents were totally avoided because a motorist saw a cyclist's bright yellow jersey. Just because some cyclists wearing neon colors might have gotten hit doesn't mean that bright colors never alert motorists that a cyclist is on the road. It's impossible to say how many motorists avoid cyclists because they noticed their clothing.

Milton Keynes

Today when I was doing my morning ride in the dark (5 AM) I came across a couple women out walking who had lights on their ankles shining forward. It was quite noticeable and I was glad they had those lights because sometimes it's hard to make out pedestrians in all the shadows.

Maelochs

So much science ... used so badly by so many.