Victim blaming?

[The utility cyclist]

given there's no proof no I'm not sacrificing my safety, in fact contrary to your suggestion, those who push 'safety' aids and wear it sacrifice the safety of all vunerable road users in the long run as we've seen over the last 70 or so years.
think about it.

[pwa]

given there's no proof no I'm not sacrificing my safety, in fact contrary to your suggestion, those who push 'safety' aids and wear it sacrifice the safety of all vunerable road users in the long run as we've seen over the last 70 or so years.
think about it.

I don't trust "evidence" from academic studies. I trust my own instincts and the evidence of my eyes. As a driver I see and notice cyclists with good lights, hi-viz and reflectives sooner and I think that allows me more time to take account of them, and it makes it a lot less likely that any distraction or lack of concentration on my part (I am a fallible human being) could result in me noticing a cyclist too late. When I cycle at night I take that evidence into account. Not what some academic tells me. I know myself and I know that I do not "compensate" by adopting more risky behaviour than I would without the hi-viz, unless by that we mean using the roads at night at all. I don't foresee a time in the future when cars driven by humans will not be subject to failings due to driver error, so I do what I can as a cyclist to mitigate that factor. If you are waiting for the perfect driver to come along you will be waiting a long time.

[Edwards]

If a person is so obvious then why do I have a problem with cyclists not seeing me?

The Highway code for as long as I can remember has given advice for pedestrians wearing light and reflective things. The "wear something light a night" campaign ran for years it is not new.

So unless you want to be partly blamed for your injury/demise it is probably a good idea to follow the Highway Code. You or your heirs could end up without fair compensation, so why give them the opportunity of wriggle room?

[MikeF]

Nothing is 'camoflaged' to me and many others, I see it as a failing on my part to have not looked properly

Really? Unless you are unique in the animal kingdom I think you will find many things are camouflaged to you. Camouflage plays a great part in failure to see. The forces use it and many creatures' survival depends on it.

[The utility cyclist]

Nothing is 'camoflaged' to me and many others, I see it as a failing on my part to have not looked properly

Really? Unless you are unique in the animal kingdom I think you will find many things are camouflaged to you. Camouflage plays a great part in failure to see. The forces use it and many creatures' survival depends on it.

Not at all, and use of the word camoflage is incorrect in this instance anyway hence my quotation marks.
Everything can be seen on the road that requires to be assessed, it's just that people get lazy, they make presumptions, they are impatient, they are distracted, their attitude is poor and so on, there is never an excuse not to see.
The very few times i've looked but did not see was purely my error, I didn't take enough time/too fast to allow brain to process information, nothing happened, no-one was fearful for their safety because of my safety margin but it was my error and one i think to rectify so i don't miss seeing.

Accepting ones failures and absolute responsibilities is the first step towards being a better cyclist and motorist and importantly from that a better human being.

[pwa]

Nothing is 'camoflaged' to me and many others, I see it as a failing on my part to have not looked properly

Really? Unless you are unique in the animal kingdom I think you will find many things are camouflaged to you. Camouflage plays a great part in failure to see. The forces use it and many creatures' survival depends on it.

Not at all, and use of the word camoflage is incorrect in this instance anyway hence my quotation marks.
Everything can be seen on the road that requires to be assessed, it's just that people get lazy, they make presumptions, they are impatient, they are distracted, their attitude is poor and so on, there is never an excuse not to see.
The very few times i've looked but did not see was purely my error, I didn't take enough time/too fast to allow brain to process information, nothing happened, no-one was fearful for their safety because of my safety margin but it was my error and one i think to rectify so i don't miss seeing.

Accepting ones failures and absolute responsibilities is the first step towards being a better cyclist and motorist and importantly from that a better human being.

You explain human failings, both your own and other people's, when we drive. That will continue as long as humans are in charge of the controls. We are human so we fail. Even if we try not to, we still fail a bit. Knowing that, we can never expect every motorist on dark roads to be driving as carefully as we would like. So we try to do things that shout out "Look! I'm here!". That is what I did when I cycled on dark roads in the 1970s and it has remained my practice upto the present. I don't put my faith in what a driver should be doing because that offers me no protection at all. The same applies when I walk on dark lanes, as I sometimes do.

[mjr]

The Highway code for as long as I can remember has given advice for pedestrians wearing light and reflective things. The "wear something light a night" campaign ran for years it is not new.

So unless you want to be partly blamed for your injury/demise it is probably a good idea to follow the Highway Code. You or your heirs could end up without fair compensation, so why give them the opportunity of wriggle room?

Because some parts of the Highway Code (like the light clothing claptrap) are based on urban motorist bigotry masquerading as "common sense" and the best available research suggests that you are more likely to be a casualty if you follow that advice. So I follow the evidence, thereby maximising the probability of me not needing compensation and my heirs being untroubled until I go peacefully in my sleep, relegating the Highway Code advice to an irritating irrelevance!

[landsurfer]

I suppose there is another side to the discussion. All those that believe that wearing clothes that make them visible in the dark is a terrible conspiracy will eventually be edited out of the gene pool as they become the stuff smeared on HGV tyres ..... Not victims, volunteers ....

[reohn2]

I suppose there is another side to the discussion. All those that believe that wearing clothes that make them visible in the dark is a terrible conspiracy will eventually be edited out of the gene pool as they become the stuff smeared on HGV tyres ..... Not victims, volunteers ....

And yet the vast majority of collisions between motors and cyclists are deemed by the authorities to be the fault of the motorist.
Whilst that knowledge doesn't change anything,better driving standards would,yet driving standard degrade as traffic increases .

[mjr]

I suppose there is another side to the discussion. All those that believe that wearing clothes that make them visible in the dark is a terrible conspiracy will eventually be edited out of the gene pool as they become the stuff smeared on HGV tyres ..... Not victims, volunteers ....

It'll take a heck of a long time, as you're very unlikely to be killed while cycling even if you're doing something completely crazy like riding contraflow on the right unlit at night - and wearing Chartreuse Yellow urban camouflage is less risky than that.

[pjclinch]

I don't trust "evidence" from academic studies. I trust my own instincts and the evidence of my eyes.

One shouldn't blindly trust academic studies: they start off as a first word in a debate, not (as some assume) the last word in proof. So they need to be read and understood by a community and their findings put in context before they're taken as How It Really Is. That this is clearly the case is shown by how many contradict others, so you need more evidence than "someone got it through peer-review".

On the other hand, trusting only our own instincts to underpin what you do assumes that everyone else has the same ones, and that's pretty clearly not true (for example, when driving my instinct is to overtake cyclists giving lots of space, or waiting until I have that space, others do as I do, but quite a lot... don't).

Furthermore, while it's quite obvious you can see someone more easily/further away in hi-viz than someone in Normal Clothes, unless the NCs render one invisible to the point of creating a collision that's a bit of a moot point. It's a bit like a hi-viz car like a Polis Scotland car in dayglo stripes is easier to pick out than a smaller black car, but I can see small, black cars quite well enough that I don't fail to spot them on the bike or drive in to them unexpectedly in the car.

Pete.

[pjclinch]

I suppose there is another side to the discussion. All those that believe that wearing clothes that make them visible in the dark is a terrible conspiracy will eventually be edited out of the gene pool as they become the stuff smeared on HGV tyres ..... Not victims, volunteers ....

The problem with roadkill smeared on HGV tyres is more that people in YELLOW jackets may assume they're easy to see, even when they're in the very considerable blind spots of HGVs. Including the ones turning left at junctions, squishing people in their blind spots.

All of the near misses and hits I can remember were cases of either the other party not looking or not being in control. In those cases wearing hi-viz was no help to me at all. Since I've stopped wearing it there hasn't been any obvious change in my interaction with traffic. If a driver is paying attention they can see a small, unlit pothole: a cyclist is no problem. On the other hand, if they're not looking it doesn't make any difference. A cycling acquaintance once remarked he'd been rear-ended waiting to enter a roundabout by someone looking around to the other traffic. Was he alright? Certainly, because he was driving a fire engine at the time...

Pete.

[reohn2]

A cycling acquaintance once remarked he'd been rear-ended waiting to enter a roundabout by someone looking around to the other traffic. Was he alright? Certainly, because he was driving a fire engine at the time...

Pete.

I was chatting with a paramedic some time ago who told me about him having blue lights flashing driving along a street slowly whilst looking for a house number,when he was rear ended.
The driver of the offending car claimed it wasn't their fault as he should have been driving faster

[irc]

the best available research suggests that you are more likely to be a casualty if you follow that advice.

Interesting. Any link?

Also assuming this is true can you suggest a mechanism why. I'd suggest that like helmets any effect is so small that it is very hard to measure. Cyclist accidents are rare anyway. So the subset where hi-viz might make a difference is a fraction of an already small number. Then there are many other factors to control for.

But fire away with the evidence.

[irc]

The problem with roadkill smeared on HGV tyres is more that people in YELLOW jackets may assume they're easy to see, even when they're in the very considerable blind spots of HGVs. Including the ones turning left at junctions, squishing people in their blind spots.

Well you can't help stupidity. If someone chooses to put themselves in danger what they wear isn't going to matter.

All of the near misses and hits I can remember were cases of either the other party not looking or not being in control. In those cases wearing hi-viz was no help to me at all. Since I've stopped wearing it there hasn't been any obvious change in my interaction with traffic.

I'd suggest the number of times when it makes a difference is so small that just trying to remember near misses won't work. I could probably cycle past cars in the doorzone thousands of times without getting doored. It doesn't mean I wouldn't be safer riding further out, all else equal. The number of times when it is critical is tiny.

Just like when I said earlier I've cycled over a decade using my mirror and only once has it prevented an accident. Take that one incident away and I wouldn't be able to point to any times it had prevented a crash.