Sussex police target motorcyclists about Hi Viz

Pufftmw

There is a lot to be said for defensive riding as well.

I used to be a motorbike courier in London and now commute cycle/everywhere by bike. There is so much to riding safely in road awarenes that is necessary to survive that goes beyond wearing dayglow. Anticipation of where cars may/may not go, road positioning such that people can't avoid seeing you, eyeballing of other road users, use of hand signals to indicate change of direction (coupled with eyeballing), safety checks when moving out from behind parked cars, not pulling up the inside of buses/lorries when lights are about to change, watching pedestrians for walking out or hailing cabs, using sound to tell you who/what is around/behind you etc etc

I ride forcefully in that I make other road users aware of which piece of road is mine (lights etc) but I expect them not to have seen me (if that makes sense!). I don't need dayglow to assist them to see me, I expect them not to have and ride accordingly.

FWIW I saw a school outing today outside of Buckingham Palace - 30+ schoolkids + teachers all in dayglow... Now that is H&S gone mad!!!

tjwood

Pufftmw wrote:

I expect them not to have seen me (if that makes sense!). I don't need dayglow to assist them to see me, I expect them not to have and ride accordingly.

That's a good argument and I'd certainly agree with your other comments about defensive cycling, but only up to a point. On most roads you'd find that if you truly were invisible you'd have no place to cycle that wasn't seriously dangerous. So you do rely on people to have seen you (otherwise why bother with hand signals etc...?)

Given that at least some times you rely on people to see you, I don't see why making it as easy as possible for them to see you is a bad thing. Especially in adverse conditions (dark, rain, icy/steamed up windscreens etc) a hi-vis garment with large quantities of retro-reflective tape (i.e. not just bike/sportswear with a thin stripe of silver) is many many times more eye catching than other clothing. This is particularly apparent when you're at the periphery of someone's vision, as cyclists tend to be when they are most at risk.


There's widespread recognition that retro-reflective markings vastly improve road safety - there is a new EU regulation that will soon require lorries to have retro-reflective markings fitted to all sides to outline them in headlights (info) - if something as big as a lorry needs that, I'd say there must be an even stronger argument for something as small as a cyclist to use retro-reflective markings (in this case clothing) too.