Edit: to clarify: the message in the ad is actually ironic/satirical, mocking the advice for cyclists to wear high-viz at night.
It uses the same logic but inverts the parts and responsabilities, by suggesting to motorists (not cyclists) to apply bright paint on their cars.
So this ad is not pro or against high-viz, it’s against victim blaming
Cross-posted from: https://mastodon.uno/users/rivoluzioneurbanamobilita/statuses/113544508246569296
To be fair, cars have headlight and taillights.
Here in Sweden cars are required to allways have their headlights on when the car is moving, making them far easier to see even during the day.
It us frankly one of the most annoying things about crossing the street when being abroad, cars having their headlights off during the day, it is much more difficult to see if a car is moving if it has the headlights turned off, than if they are on.
That is not a requirement, you to have to have front and rear reflectors, I don’t remember if side reflectors are required or not.
One thing that a lot of bikes has that is illegal here but ignored by the police, is a flashing front light.
Rear lights can absolutely be flashing, but front lights can’t.
They are actually required at night. https://www.transportstyrelsen.se/sv/vagtrafik/Trafikregler/Cyklist-mopedist-motorcyklist/Trafikregler/Regler-for-cykel/
Reflectors are also required.
And yeah the rear light are allowed to flash.
I still agree that cars are way more visible.
That is not a requirement
It is, actually: https://www.transportstyrelsen.se/sv/vagtrafik/trafikregler/cyklist-mopedist-motorcyklist/trafikregler/regler-for-cykel/
You’re liable to pay 500 SEK if you bike without lights when it’s dark outside.
As others have said, this depends on the jurisdiction.
In the UK, you have to have lights on at night: white at the front, red at the back. They can either be steady or blinking.
The front lights are allowed to flash in Denmark and it’s super annoying, and dangerous in my opinion. The lowest allowed blinking frequency is also way lower than rear lights in Sweden, so it’s like being flashed by a camera repeatedly.
In Belgium at least they are required (reflectors aren’t on all styles of bikes), problem is that cyclists often have battery powered lights which are not very bright to the point you could say they are not even working. And in my experience it really renders cyclists invisible at night until you almost run into them.
In that sense high-viz vests definitely help because they usually make them stand out more than even normal lights.
Ofcourse this is mostly needed in the places with no separate infrastructure and no street lights. (Edit: which is what the situation is in near where I live, the shortest route to bike is through farmlands with no infrastructure for bikes and no streetlight ms for sections of it. I’d personally love better and separate infrastructure since it’s basically part of the reason why avoid biking there during the lang dark winter)
Places I’ve lived in the US people keep them off as the default. Here in Seattle people don’t even turn them on at night half the time, I guess they think the street lighting is good enough. I try and signal people to turn on their lights if I’m biking at night and so far none that I know of have actually turned them on
ho, you are still using street ligths?
It’s been years that we cut them on a lot of major axis and after midnight in my town for all the classic roads.
It’s mainly to reduce the electricity bill, have less night pollution (more stars in the sky!) and reduce the speed of the cars when the road is empty (quite effective!).
Side note: since now few years, our cars are sold with front lights always active for visibility purpose (these small lights are cut only when we switching to the big ones)
Here in the U.S., (and I’m assuming it’s the same elsewhere, but just explaining for simplicity), cars used to have a simple headlight switch, which also lit up the instrument cluster on the dashboard. It was an easy heuristic: If you can’t see the gauges because it’s dark, turn on the headlights.
Now, every car has a marketing-gimmick dashboard lit up all the time with all sorts of multi-color lights. In the cars I’ve been in, the headlight indicator just a small, green light in the corner. Drivers accustomed to the old way think that their headlights are on because the dashboard is lit up. The Toyota Prius was notorious for this when it was new; I used to joke that they didn’t come with headlights as a way to save fuel.
It’s not as bad now, but people just forget o sometimes. It’s worse when cars have day-time running lights, because then the drivers see light coming from the front of the car and think all the marker lights are on.
One of my cars had running lights and always lit digital instrument cluster, but it still managed to hit that same heuristic, only in reverse: to be visible in the daylight, the instrument cluster had to get way brighter, so if the cluster feels absurdly bright, turn on the full headlights.
Nowadays, I think they include a light sensor to keep the cluster at a comfy level regardless of how bright it is, which I think should only be done for ones with automatic lights and only when they’re set to automatic mode, but sadly nobody ever asks my opinion about these things
Modern cars also tend to have daytime running lights that are switched on automatically when the ignition is turned on, and are meant purely for visibility.
With modern cars, you mean cars since some time early 2000s? Actual modern cars (5 yo cars), are the only ones I see not have headlights turned on during day time.
Apparently, it’s not required under EU law to have the headlights turned on during daytime, and manufactures will rather have a couple of cm longer milage…
not have headlights turned on
Running lights, not headlights. Different things both practically and legally.
Yesterday I was paying attention specifically to the front lights of cars. Almost all cars that had license plates registered in the last ten years also had independent running lights. Mostly in the form of a white LED strip around or under the headlight cover, an element built into the headlight (e.g. a ring around the main lens in BMWs), or annoyingly, a separate amber-colored light that I often mistake for a turning signal.
Legally, running lights might not even exist at all where I live. Traffic laws (and common sense) require proper headlights to be used in any kind of reduced visibility condition.
Corner markers?
I remember that Volvo had those for a few years here, but that was in the very early 2000’s I haven’t seen the on normal cars for a long time.
Seems like a good idea though.
Whatever law required headlights on totally backfired. Rear lights are off and people don’t realize or don’t care, and now they won’t switch on the actual lights manually because there’s an automation.
The satire misses the mark since cars already have strict mandatory visibility requirements by law. In the EU, you must have working headlights, brake lights, turn signals, daytime running lights (since 2011), fog lights, reverse lights, and reflectors. Driving without any of these gets you fined, points on your license, and fails vehicle inspection (TÜV/MOT). These aren’t optional safety suggestions like cyclist hi-viz - they’re legal requirements with real penalties.
I don’t know about yankee laws…
State dependent. Maryland for example legally requires a front headlamp and a rear reflector in low visibility conditions. Also must have a bell or horn but can’t have a siren (?).
It’s less state dependent than you think. The feds have the last say in the safety equipment that comes on your car from the factory. They write the regulations on safety equipment for all highway vehicles.
What is interesting is that the NFPA, (the US National Fire Prevention Association), which writes the guidance for US public safety departments, has learned that you can have too much flashy-flashies and woo-woos and sparkles hanging on your vehicle. We used to hang as much as that stuff as we could on fire trucks and ambulances. Now, new rigs are toning it down to reflective chevrons and marker lights on the back end to prevent dazzling and confusing traffic as they approach a scene. The NFPA national tracking has shown a marked decline in tertiary accidents.
Reflectives and markers are important, but you can do too much can have worse outcomes because of it.
It’s less state dependent than you think. The feds have the last say in the safety equipment that comes on your car from the factory. They write the regulations on safety equipment for all highway vehicles.
You’re right that they regulate the safety equipment that is required to be on from factory, but the states nearly copy/paste those and make them statutes in their jurisdictions. I have never seen a federal traffic cop. It is the state’s law enforcement arm (the various state troopers, county deputies, and all the forms of police) that enforces the traffic code. What gets people tickets (rarely) is that the states don’t ctrl+a, ctrl+c, ctrl+v the requirements, so some don’t get added into the state codes, and they can add on stuff. One example off the top of my head is the third brake light. Federally required after, oh, 1984 I think, but not required in my state. The cops can’t stop you if it is completely removed and made to look as if it was never there, but they can stop you if it is broken, because the statute reads that way. For the opposite example, I think we regulated the ground-effects lighting recently.
If you need a rear light or not actually varies state to state. The reflectors are fed policy and that’s why all bikes sold in the US have them. The siren thing seems to be because kids were rigging sirens to their wheels attached to a chain and being a general nuisance at some point in the 50s. That said, that’s about all a car would hear that’s not electronic. That or an canned air horn.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PpQFt3biKMA
A video of the wheel siren in action.
Huh? Could you explain once more why this doesn’t work?
Keep in mind that cycling also has a lot of visibility requirements, it is illegal to drive without lights at night, you need to have reflectors front, back, in the spokes and on the pedals. This also results in fines and points on your drivers license. Keep any remarks on enforcements for yourself, car drivers don’t check or even fix their headlights the moment they break either as my last few drives showed me.
Comparing the optional wearing of hi-vis west to the optional painting cars a brighter colour makes sense when the goal is to mock the immediate question “well, was the cyclist wearing hi-vis?” that always seem to pop up when a crash happens.
It’s funny, but as a driver and a cyclist, the amount of times I barely saw the person on the bike, because they had no hi viz, no lights and no reflectors (and black/dark clothing), even in moderately good visibility conditions is too damn high.
It’s not that big of a deal in cities, but I’d be really pushing it to ride my bike out on a 70+ kmph road, and you’d have to hold me at gunpoint to do it without any lights, because I’d be as good as dead anyway.
Of course black cars are kinda the same, except here in Poland every car is required by law to have at least position lights on at all times (yes, sunny daylight too), and it makes a world of a difference no matter the paint color.
I prefer when all people occupying the road, whether its a pedestrian, cyclist, motorcyclist, car, or horse rider be as visible as possible.
Its why I refuse to drive a gray or silver car. They blend in with the pavement at certain times in the am and pm and if it’s raining really hard they disappear. In a lot of ways they are worse than black cars.
What’s wrong with making sure you are visible? Why is that something to make fun of? (I’m not asking you directly, I just don’t get the joke in the ad.)
I’d even argue (this is what the Internet is for) that gray cars in rain are the absolute worst. They just disappear without any kind of lights on. I don’t know why we don’t just have headlights and taillights on all the time. It’s how I’ve driven for the past 15 years, to me it just makes sense. I’m never caught forgetting to put them on when it’s raining or when it’s dark, because they are always on. I like people to see me, I do not want to be involved in a collision.
They just disappear without any kind of lights on
My area has a law where you must have lights on when raining
Anyone who isnt a fucking dumbass that turns off auto mode will have a vehicle that does so automatically. Sometimes rain sensors, sometimes light, sometimes just turning on the wipers, but they all have it.
Some drivers are dumbasses and refuse to use auto mode that’s been around for 30 years, and those people should have their license taken away.
Cars have lights on them?
Unless you’re in the Netherlands, where 2/3rds of the bikes will have the shitty “this is legally a light” LEDs from the convenience shops… Oh, and 2/3rds of those will be either out of battery, or installed facing the wrong way.
Must be a big city problem. I do see them, but the majority uses proper mounted lights.
One upside of those illegal fat bikes is that the lights usually work just fine, making them easy to see.
From my experience, usually they don’t. Even the ones that do aren’t to the same degree as a car is required to. I want biking to be better than driving, so this is not an anti-bike comment. Maybe we need to add a requirement for bikes to have lights like we require for cars?
In this thread: difference in worldwide laws. In the Netherlands you get fined 65+ eur per broken or missing light on your bike. Checks are frequent.
The number of dumbasses I see biking against traffic with no lights wearing black well after dark is too high for me to find this remotely serious.
Also, cars have a dozen reflectors, daytime running lights, and a ton of safety mechanisms.
Tldr: meme better, this is wrong and unsafe
