Hi vis discussion thread (read post #1)

CramCycle wrote: »

I say again, it's broad daylight. Quite a few of the cars have no lights or DRLs. I can see every car, every pedestrian and every cyclist.

Yeah, not one of them was hard to see. I had to up the video quality from 144p before it was clear that wasn't a Brompton though. Running a video at 144p is like being quite near-sighted.

GreeBo wrote: »

Again with the personal attacks.

You called CramCycle's opinion laughable about three posts back.

CramCycle wrote: »

I say again, it's broad daylight. Quite a few of the cars have no lights or DRLs. I can see every car, every pedestrian and every cyclist. If you think that is not broad daylight then I give up, it's optimal visibility, it would be damn near impossible to blend in to the background.

I say this , hand on heart, if you are struggling or think some people were harder than others to see in that video, you need to get an eye test and stop.deiving until suitable corrective measures are in place.

Id have understood if you put up a video at night, or even dawn or dusk but you have put up the perfect example of a time when any aid should be completely unnecessary.

Honest question, did you find some of the cyclists harder to see than others?

You can keep saying it but it won't make it any truer.
That's what a good camera does in lower light levels.

take any still where the bikes are not directly beside you, the third bike blends into the background, the others do not.

Maybe you are back to talking about seeing bikes as they are beside you?
Personally i prefer to see them in advance, maybe I'm just a better driver than you are.

GreeBo wrote: »

You can keep saying it but it won't make it any truer.
That's what a good camera does in lower light levels.

It's also what the human eye does. It's capable of responding to an enormous range of intensity, exceeding about ten orders of magnitude.

GreeBo wrote: »

take any still where the bikes are not directly beside you, the third bike blends into the background, the others do not.

?? They're all perfectly visible. This is a terrible example.

GreeBo wrote: »

Maybe you are back to talking about seeing bikes as they are beside you?
Personally i prefer to see them in advance, maybe I'm just a better driver than you are.

I think you're mixing CramCycle up with me there.

tomasrojo wrote: »

This is all good fun (not fun), but what statistical evidence is available doesn't really show any better outcome in terms of collisions between people who wear hiviz and people who don't, so it's sort of irrelevant looking at frames of youtube videos.

It's not an exhaustively studied phenomenon, and guess it's possible further studies (not that self-selecting, self-reporting Danish one) might show an advantage to using hiviz, but it's unlikely to be a big one, seeing as the effect didn't turn up in the more rigorous of the early studies.

Indeed. As I alluded to in an earlier post there's really little point in arguing over minutiae of situations and whether or not somebody looks more visible with a hi-vis on.

We can simply look across the water and see places like Netherlands where they've taken an entirely different direction in ensuring safety of vulnerable people on the road, and we can see clearly the proof of how well that approach has worked, with all the associated societal benefits, and nary a helmet or hi-vis in sight.

All that has been achieved in the Netherlands can be done here - it's simply a question of whether people want to follow an approach with a proven success record (well designed, self-enforcing, calming infrastructure, strong legal protection for vulnerable users), or one that has none (armouring people up).

Final thought related to the legal protection issue - I'm quite sure if a barrister in Netherlands court tried spewing out some of the victim blaming nonsense we've heard them get away with in courts here, they would be laughed out of court and their own credibility would come under serious scrutiny.

GreeBo wrote: »

And I think we would all welcome that...but in the meantime what do you do?
Give out about motorists or make yourself as visible as possible (or both!)

You make it sound like that wonderful situation is going to come about by itself shortly, and all we have to do is sit tight for a while and dutifully don our hi-vis while we wait for it to happen. That is not the case.

A pushback is necessary because outside of forums like this there is a concerted effort from certain quarters to dominate the road safety discussion with the question of making hi-vis mandatory as the main way to make our public spaces safer.

As long as the discussion is being dominated by hi-vis discussion, there is no attention, none, being put on other far more pertinent factors such as car-centric infrastructure everywhere and the poor standards of driving and adherance to road laws in this country.

Personally, i don't have any problem with wearing reflective clothing (although as I have posted previous it is not a conventional yellow hi-vis but does the job of reflecting light 10 times better).

I do have a problem with people who should have highest responsibility for duty of care on the road trying to compel me to do so and in doing so diverting attention from where it needs to be directed - bad infrastructure and driver behaviour.

A motorist driving down the road is never going to have his/her life threatened by my not wearing a hi-vis. I have my life theatened on a daily basis by the careless, hostile and sometimes downright aggressive behaviour of some motorists.

tomasrojo wrote: »

Brake lights are diffuse, decent bike headlights are collimated and far brighter than a reflection of already diffuse light.

There isn't an argument as regards brightness of a light, or the physics behind reflected, diffuse light vs. a collimated beam.

Collimated light, by definition travels in one direction only, and by definition, it's apparent brightness is very quickly reduced to an observer off-axis. This is the reason that cars have additional side marker lamps both front and rear.

So unless the light is pointed directly (in reality ±20°) at the driver or at the right angle against the car's mirror, it isn't very effective.

Reflective clothing, even when illuminated by brake lights, can be very effective as it's a large surface area which is sometimes easier to see than a small point source, and almost always easier to see than black in a city.

Duckjob wrote: »

Indeed. As I alluded to in an earlier post there's really little point in arguing over minutiae of situations and whether or not somebody looks more visible with a hi-vis on.

I content that it's not a minutiae at all. A light can easily be obscured or have it's effectiveness drop off-axis, reflective or bright colours beat black in those cases.

CramCycle wrote: »

You have won this thread Andrew

It's the middle of the day, they are all pretty visible, if you think any of them are less visible I would suggest an eye test. Now some are more memorable but that's a different story,

CramCycle wrote: »

I say again, it's broad daylight. Quite a few of the cars have no lights or DRLs. I can see every car, every pedestrian and every cyclist. If you think that is not broad daylight then I give up, it's optimal visibility, it would be damn near impossible to blend in to the background.

I say this , hand on heart, if you are struggling or think some people were harder than others to see in that video, you need to get an eye test and stop.deiving until suitable corrective measures are in place...


...Honest question, did you find some of the cyclists harder to see than others?

tomasrojo wrote: »

?? They're all perfectly visible. This is a terrible example.
.

All strawmanning. GreeBo said "most visible". I saw them all too, but the guy in black was least visible.

I'll tell you what, try and write a computer vision algorithm to pick out the cyclists, and see which is the hardest to detect.

Whatever about contrived situations of cyclist in the park, in the real world, in murky grey urban environments, bright clothing stands out more in nearly every circumstance.

conkennedy wrote: »

Maybe so, but it still doesn't stop motorists from running you over becasue they are not looking out for you - even in broad daylight.

I don't get what you're trying to say?

You can do your best, and still fail, but that isn't a reason not to try.

Kevin Irving wrote: »

There isn't an argument as regards brightness of a light, or the physics behind reflected, diffuse light vs. a collimated beam.

There is when you're talking about reflection. A collimated beam pointing straight at a reflector returns more light than a diffuse one.

Kevin Irving wrote: »

Collimated light, by definition travels in one direction only, and by definition, it's apparent brightness is very quickly reduced to an observer off-axis. This is the reason that cars have additional side marker lamps both front and rear.

No, collimated light has a bright centre, but it's never perfectly unidirectional.

Kevin Irving wrote: »

So unless the light is pointed directly (in reality ±20°) at the driver or at the right angle against the car's mirror, it isn't very effective.

That's far too narrow an angle. If that was true, I couldn't see the headlight of my headlight when standing off to one side. I can.

Kevin Irving wrote: »

Reflective clothing, even when illuminated by brake lights, can be very effective as it's a large surface area

It's not a large surface. It's just a couple of strips. Unless it's one of the proviz tops, which isn't what most people are wearing.

Kevin Irving wrote: »

All strawmanning. GreeBo said "most visible". I saw them all too, but the guy in black was least visible.

It's not strawmanning. If another cyclist appeared at the end trailing a giant helium balloon with a strobe light attached to it, they'd be the most visible. It doesn't make any of the other three suddenly irresponsbile. They're all pefectly visible.

Kevin Irving wrote: »

I'll tell you what, try and write a computer vision algorithm to pick out the cyclists, and see which is the hardest to detect.

See above. It's irrelvant. They're all visible. They've done enough. That's been the point all along. I never actuallly said anything about people being more visible or not. People only have to be adequately or, preferably, very visible. They don't have to be "as visible as possible",which is a moving target anyway.

Yeah, fair point. Collimated isn't really the correct term.

tomasrojo wrote: »

I was trying to find a decent image of a headlight pattern, but this came up instead:

Let me guess, to you his trousers stand out the most right?

GreeBo wrote: »

Let me guess, to you his trousers stand out the most right?

Don't you mean: why is there a rain drop on the front of his bike?

GreeBo wrote: »

So whats your answer, stop wearing reflective clothing because I got hit while wearing it?

Nope, HiVis is not a safety panacea; it won't protect the wearer, or cyclist in this case, if a motorist is not paying attention to the road and/or is only looking out for other motorists.



So don't victim blame.

conkennedy wrote: »

Nope, HiVis is not a safety panacea; it won't protect the wearer, or cyclist in this case, if a motorist is not paying attention to the road and/or is only looking out for other motorists.



So don't victim blame.

So I guess you dont wear a seatbelt?

conkennedy wrote: »

Yup, that's it - but it's really telling that we have to explain that....

You dont have to explain that.
What people are asking you to explain is why you would refuse to do something that makes you more visible on the road.
Nobody said reflective clothing was a panacea or that it would protect you (two things it has in common with bike lights btw).

But again the attitude here seems to be "I'm not doing it because its not my fault if a car hits me".

It's a pretty childish attitude and when there is only ever one loser is a car V bike incident, its a foolish and possibly deadly one to maintain.