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Nah, no tattoos for me SRE..Can’t be bothered putting up with pricks…
Best addition for reducing crashes is a 6" metal spike sticking out from every steering wheel.Other than that, I always assume they haven't seen me and I do wear a bright reflective vest.
I have been riding with a hi-viz yellow mesh jacket for years. I find the mesh jacket over a tee-shirt to be cooler on a hot sunny day than just a tee-shirt. Due to blocking the sun I assume.A few years back, I was riding the back roads and stopped to buy two cantaloupes (bigger than a softball but smaller than a soccer ball) from a roadside stand that I knew had excellent melons. So I stuffed both melons inside my jacket to carry them home.Riding thru a few small towns on the way back, it seemed my visibility had increased at least ten fold!!!Weird, huh?the Dolley Parton effect?
Given the number of road menders and loads of other wearers of yellow hi viz I feel that it is of limited use.
My point is that, in the UK at least, there are so many wearers of yellow hi viz vests these days that they no longer attract the attention, hence the appearance of orange hi viz in recent years (and pink, though there could be other reasons for that). The logic is that if everyone wore yellow hi viz it would be the single non-wearer that would stand out. It loses its impact. FWIW I have been riding for more than fifty years and never had a collision of the SMIDSY sort and I’ve never worn hi viz except where mandatory on the continent. As has been said it’s more about maintaining your own safety bubble and treating other road users as if they are incompetent, plus attracting attention by moving road position at junctions. Hi viz won’t do any harm but I wouldn’t adopt the Volvo driver’s mentality of feeling safer wearing it. Until it became mandatory in the UK for headlights to come on when the motor starts I used mine in accordance with the Highway Code ie put them on in poor visibility. Again no SMIDSY incidents. Can I really have been that lucky?
there are so many wearers of yellow hi viz vests these days that they no longer attract the attention, hence the appearance of orange hi viz in recent years (and pink, though there could be other reasons for that). The logic is that if everyone wore yellow hi viz it would be the single non-wearer that would stand out. It loses its impact.
Stretch, what evidence do you have to support your assertion that the 3rd brake light no longer reduces reared collisions?
Am I making a couple of assumptions here?Oh, yeah! That's why it's an opinion.........My point was agreeing with Speciality's point that Hi-Vis is becoming less effective the morepeople wear it. I think he has a point, and the 3rd brake light was my analogy. And the 3rd brakelight doesn't appear to be as effective as it was at first.And I'm also gonna continue to assume that I'm invisible to car drivers..... (Although not to cops with radar guns!) -Stretch
Huzo, you're right - the comparison between the effects of a third brake light in 1985 and2022 is certainly NOT apples to apples. Lots of variables there. Just traffic volume alone iscompletely different. The result of arguing for or against the effectiveness of that drattedlight is NOT going to result in a black and white, irrefutably clear answer.I suppose at this point I have to apologize for my large contribution in hijacking theHi-Vis thread! Sorry about that....... Back to colorful clothing!Aerostich will sell ya a complete suit in Hi-Vis. -Stretch
Chad, pretty much everybody agrees that when the third brake light was introduced, it definitely reduced rear-end collisions.A quick troll through the internet also shows that everybody pretty much agrees that the effectiveness has decreased with time.The big question is, how much has that effectiveness decreased over time?Some sources say that there's virtually no difference any more, while government sourcessay that they still reduce accidents, but provide no hard numbers to support that claim.Looking at things anecdotally, I don't think it makes much difference any more, and one or two of the sources I've citedseem to agree with me there. That's my opinion - YMMV. https://www.chicagotribune.com/autos/sc-rear-end-safety-autocover-0901-20160831-story.htmlNHTSADOT HS 808 696NHTSA Technical ReportMarch 1998https://www.woodrufflawyers.com/blog/2016/10/rear-end-car-accidents-and-modern-vehicle-requir -Stretch
....collisions from 1986 through 1991.....
Between 1988 — the earliest figures available — and 2014, the percentage of fatal crashes that involved rear-enders actually rose from 4.6 percent to 5.2 percent. Rear-end injury accidents also increased, from 24.9 percent of all crashes to 28.7 percent, according to the NHTSA. Likewise, rear-end property damage-only collisions increased from 23.5 to 29 percent, and the percentage of rear-end accidents jumped from 23.8 to 28.8 percent.But such raw data can be misleading, experts said, because other factors are involved.
Yep.For 5 years it WAS more effective - with effectiveness apparently steadily decreasing.If it was still as effective in later years, then we'd expect the percentage, (NOT #) of rear-end collisions to remain flat, yes?But as was discussed earlier, there are other factors involved, and even the experts agree that thepicture ain't as clear as they'd like it to be. And we don't have those statistics from prior to 2014, so wecan't really say definitively. It would seem from the increase in rear-end accidents that something isn'tworking, eh? Like maybe people are not paying as much attention to that 3rd brake light anymore?It would seem that with more SUVs and pickups on the road compared to the 1980s, and the 3rd brakelight higher up off the road in most cases as a result, that the light would be more visible and thereforemore effective. But people following too closely would negate that effect......and on and on we go....It could also be that the 3rd brake light is still VERY effective and the carnage without it would be much, much worse........... Entertaining debate, but enough for me tonight.Good Night, everybody! -Stretch