njkayaker

The tail lights (some of what people use are really small) can be confused with other things (like driveway reflectors). Ankle reflective straps move in a rather distinctive pattern.

Maelochs

Disciplined drivers (by and large) not on drugs or the ophone 9by and large) and vehicles odd enough that they are hard to miss .... but hey, you can generally be safe not taking anything I post too seriously.

As for the apocryphal "Frog's eye" syndrome .... the legend is that a frog can only see things which look like flying insects ... if you roll a basketball past, a frog 's brain will register nothing.

I don't buy it ... a raccoon is about the size of a basketball.

but anyway ... I have seen what you mean ... people looking for cars will not see bikes or motorcycles. On one occasion I was waiting and watching on cars and almost overlooked a semi-trailer ... because my brain was programmed to see "automobile approaching." I didn't pull out, but I didn't catch myself until the "go" signal had been sent.

Kontact

I didn't say that the study suggest a Cause, so I don't know why you think I said that. I agree that the study only suggests correlations, not causes.

The fact that gray produces contrary results suggests that color isn't predictive of visibility, but without knowing other factors it is impossible to say.


In other words, gray car drivers could be so much "better" that they more than make up for their low contrast car color. Or, gray cars may be what other drivers are most used to looking for, so they are functionally more visible.

By the same token, black may be a great color to make your car stand out, but it can't make up enough for your bad driving to positively affect the statistics.


There is likely a certain amount of cancellation in anything like this where the combination of factors make "good" colors have poor results and vice versa.



To make a cycling analogy, why set the Hour Record at 7000 feet if there is less oxygen up there? Because other factors more than make up for the hypoxia. Without quantifying both aerodynamics and oxygen use separately the results are going to appear to be contradictory.

Kontact

Again, you keep referring to things that you seem unwilling to actually articulate. If you want a response to something specific, re-post the specific thing you want a response to.


In terms of car color, this would be an interesting conversation if cars only came in black or white. But since they come in mostly medium tones, my point about high contrast colors like black, white or red stands. These colors are all rather conspicuous compared to the more common gray, tan and gold.

Maelochs

Maybe that post from you is what made me think you said something about there being a correlation between cause and color. I guess when you said precisely that, I misunderstood.

In any case, I tend to agree with most of what you are saying here ... but I also tend to think not much of what any of is says here, matters.

Kind of funny though ,... insurance companies have the numbers on which cars of which colors are judged responsible for most accidents ... but that wasn't mentioned in the study. If dark cars are involved in more crashes and also cause more crashes ....

The funniest part is the fact that in the UK, most accidents between bikes and cars happen on rural roads int he daytime, so visibility due to color is not an issue ... but i have to wonder is being seen at all----excessive speed on excessively narrow roads, high hedges, many curves and undulations---is responsible for all that.

Kontact

What I meant was that color is involved in CAUSING accidents, we just can't say HOW it causes them. (And we know that because the accidents aren't causing the color - more cars don't become black after being hit.)


Insurance is an interesting thing to bring up. Insurance companies don't care about the underlying cause, they care about the correlation. So if black cars are more likely to require claim payouts, the insurance company may charge a higher premium regardless of why the accidents have a tendency to happen. They are interested in the cause and effect without needing to understand how the cause works. They are a good consumer of this kind of study.

People picking colors for visibility alone are not good consumers of this study.

njkayaker

No, you keep ignoring what I say.

You ignored this.

No, they don't.

You ignored this.

You ignored this.

You ignored this.

You ignored this.

You ignored this.

No, there's no data that black or dark colors are conspicuous (more so than white).

Kontact

On the first, it would make sense to buy a black car for increased visibility over gray if you didn't like red or white cars. White might be easier to see in some traffic than black, or it might not - I'd be happy to see any study you'd like to post on that subject. But I wouldn't discount black as a high contrast color that makes objects stand out compared to muted colors.


On the second, this is the military aircraft I used to fly. You'll note that "215" is in high contrast black to allow easy visibility. Less important markings than side number are in muted gray. None of the markings are in white. In bright conditions white is lower contrast than black.

njkayaker

https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets...5/muarc263.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC387473/


I wasn't comparing black against "muted colors".

This is another instance of the "two color" problem. It's only "high contrast" relative to the background. And it's only going to be visible fairly closely (which is evident in the picture you provided).

The lettering is small. And the other lettering is smaller still. So, it's a case of it being "too small to matter".

Black, by itself, isn't "high contrast".

If you could control the background of black cars, you could control the contrast.

Kontact

The first study isn't about "visibility", it is about whether cars of certain colors have more or less crashes. That is not a direct study of visibility for all the reasons discussed. Do you understand the difference?

I'm not sure what you think we're discussing, but the general street environment is the "muted color". The point of using black or white or red or neon is to provide a contrast from the general environment that gray or brown or green or gold does not. In some cases, like lettering that has to be legible half a mile away by the control tower, black provides the most contrast making the lettering stand out. And that's exactly what those black letters on that helicopter do.

Black is a conspicuous color, allowing us to see lettering, crows, Johnny Cash, Darth Vader and limousines more easily than lower contrast colors. In fact, black and white are the highest contrast colors and will stand out more in lower lighting than bright colors as the rhodopsin levels increase or in haze.

njkayaker

Do you realize that you've provided no studies?

It says that black is "lower on the visibility index" (I can't find a definition for that).


Your wording was poor. One has to guess that "muted color" is the environment.

The attribute being compared is the color of cars against the environment.

The "general environment" includes places that have shadows. Given that black absorbs light and white reflects it, white is going to be "higher contrast" in those situations.

Given that the helicopter is a light tone, black is really the only choice.

There's nothing that indicates that visibility of aircraft is relevant to cars.

No, black is conspicuous only with an appropriate background.

Other than letters, being "conspicuous" isn't the goal of the other things. Black, as a choice, was not chosen because it made them "safer".

White doesn't work like black. In more cases (like night) white will stand out much more than black will.

Kontact

Around curbs, jersey barriers and concrete in general, white is lower contrast than black.

All colors are muted at night - which is why there are reflectors and lights for night use.



You haven't said anything that changes the fact that black is a higher contrast color than most others, which is the point I made.

njkayaker

Curbs are too small to be relevant and it's rare that you'd have a car in front of you with a Jersey barrier behind it. So, that's mostly irrelevant too.

Black is more than "muted" at night. Not all colors are "muted" to the same level.

And, reflectors doesn't mean that different colors wouldn't still be better.

You haven't said anything that indicates black, as a car color, is generally higher contrast to white.

Kontact

That's correct. I have not said that at all.