High Visibility Risk

The past couple of weeks I have been riding in a very good Gore Windstopper jacket. Whilst I have always like the fluoro colours for how they look, I've never been that keen on riding in them, though once was an advocate to some extent.

I suppose I had been suckered into the myth that fluorescent colours somehow remain fluorescent at night. The truth is they reflect a spectrum of UV light (or close to it) that the human eye can receive. At night street lamps and vehicle head lamps do not emit anything like the same output of this spectrum. Light colour is defined by a terminology called "temperature" in science and technology. The temperature of the sun is that of one which is close to the blue spectrum, as the sun sinks it becomes more orange or pink depending on atmospheric conditions. Street lighting and most vehicle lighting is also of this orange temperature. The emitters in these vehicles cannot produce the range and spectrum of light tones that the sun can.

The trouble is this jacket was given to me for Christmas. Its slightly impractical, has zip-off sleeves and is that fluorescent yellow my old Altura Nightvision jacket used to be. I kind of feel obliged to use it, but it has two problems - one is that the material seems to stink after just 2 or 3 short rides. I get around this by putting it on a hanger and on the line outside for a couple of hours. The second is that there is a black back to it. Sure there are a couple of reflective strips but its mostly black. So far there hasn't been a real issue, my lights facing rearward are good enough to make someone think they're approaching a motorbike.

When I first started using the Altura NightVision (around late 2006) I think I might have been the only rider I saw in one. I certainly don't recall seeing other riders in fluoro, either. This seemed to change over time, and now its a sea of bright yellow out there.

In fact the very first day I wore it I was amused by a driver's reaction. I pulled up behind a car waiting at the lights, no need to filter as there were only two ahead of me. The driver immediately in front of me had his stereo on full blast, and it had just stopped raining so I still had my lights on, so I think this caught the driver's attention and made him look in his rearview mirror.

It was the kind of music that was so loud that my chest was vibrating and I could feel my internal organs rattling.

It was almost as if panic came across the driver, a young lad of around 20, as he turned down his stereo. And I mean so that I could no longer hear it. I remarked this to a friend who joked to me that I "..should get done for impersonating a copper!" However that thought did remain with me, especially when I realised that the only other people on the street I was seeing were the Police.

This soon changed when other riders were quick to adopt the colour and reflective properties of these types of clothing.

When I was young (no it wasn't all fields) I would ride in a dark coat and jeans on a red hybrid with 26 inch wheels. My lights were nothing like we have now, they were miniture incandescent bulbs and only a couple of "candle power". The lights I use now will strip the paint off a taxi if it is dared to drive too close to me. There was less traffic, yes, but it was hardly conducive towards regular cycling, yet I managed something like 30 miles on a bike that by all modern standards was a piece of shit.

You still expected to see cyclists on the road. Now a new culture, 15 years on, had somehow risen. If you're NOT wearing the day glowing tops then you're somehow to blame for any incident. You did for a long time see comments left on news stories by members of the public to the effect: "..if they had bothered to wear a high visibility top then they would still be alive." (This is now, slowly, being countered. We must always question views that are held without evidence, even if it is drawn from personal experience - because that personal experience may have been wrongly interpreted.)

So these past few weeks I have taken down a loose record of how many incidents I have encountered whilst wearing this new jacket. I estimate it being 1 incident every 4 miles. Compare that to my riding in bright but more normal clothing, or the shocking Foska gear and I estimate 1 incident every 12 miles.

(By incident I mean things such as close overtakes within a 2 feet margin, cars that pull out from junctions, pedestrians that step out from pavements despite looking right at me, things that force myself to stop, swerve or shout a warning.)

Last week it came to a head when taking a bend in the road, to my left there was a junction. I am in full view and in daylight. Wearing this Gore jacket, I even have my lights on because the sun is low (it's winter), though at this point I am riding into the sun. Yet a council refuse truck driver decided it was ok to pull out on me. I only just managed to squeeze down his right side.

It is almost as if these colours are there for some motorists to switch to an autopilot. They would rather we'd all wear this as a uniform, then when things go wrong they can get off scot-free, or they can make a cursory glance. It is subjugation, forcing a definition or contract upon another party to your own advantage and it must be fought.

It goes further than just cyclists. I read of one study from Germany where workers had it taken away from them because they felt it contributed to a risk compensation behaviour. We all know that the Police, and other emergency response people are covered in it. Perhaps if the Police went back to black it might lead to a drop in crime? If you can't see the speed-gun operator from a distance and he blurs into the hedges and street furniture then it might catch out a few dangerous drivers.

The overall point of this post? We need to scrutinise the use and evidence that these things work, and why we're drawn to them in the first place. Or else we may be doing ourselves more harm than good.