High-vis works says Danish study

With ref to the Bath & Brunel study, CHALK & CHEESE the Danish study doesn't even mention distance between passing vehicles, or how many of either group drove on cycle paths compaired with kms on roads etc.

It also raises the question as to how random or what criteria was used in picking which person went into which group, making the whole study and the results/conclusions reached highly dubious.

@don simon

I agree with your comments but a motorist explaining to police why the cyclist is dead, is just a bad outcome for the cyclist?

We already have permanent cycle lanes (thick white line) and asl (advanced stop line I.e. bike box) that motorists ignore because they are not enforced and therefore no consequences to dangerous / illegal actions.

Bringing in automatic liability would change driver behaviour, radically?

The difficulty with getting riders to always use a jacket is significant in itself.
The danger is to make it compulsory.
With such a large proportion the likelihood is that the same would happen as with helmet law in Australia.
Such a large number of cyclists stopped using a bike altogether that there was a significant statistic saying lives were saved by the helmet.
The only place I know of that has a flouro jacket law is UAE and that has clearly shown itself to be simply against the bike altogether with other repressive policies also.

Attitude seems to be the biggest problem in UK. I've found taking the lane and riding assertively but also defensively works best for me, albeit now and again you meet on of the 1-2% then it's down to plain luck.

Light coloured / hi-vis helps but is not the answer in my opinion.

Anything that makes you stand out from the background is worthwhile, 2 watt led strobe lights, bright florescent clothing and reflective banding all are aids to safer riding. You can't do much as an individual against nutters who are either by ignorance or malice a danger to cyclists.

I have seen drivers fly by a cyclists with little space only to slow down to a crawl whilst passing a horse and rider. There needs to be a government and cycle orginisation television campaign to educate drivers of their ignorant/dangerous behaviour

Looking at the original paper, it is notable that the research was carried out by the Department of Civil Engineering at Aalborg and Rambøll a large company which build motorways. Anyone get the feeling there is an agenda at play in this research?

Worst dot study dot ever.

Another issue with the study is that it is not measuring the distance travelled by the two groups?

Definitely not a double blind study and lacks the use of radar as used in previous studies.

I find the best way to minimise close passes is to ride at least a metre from the kerb, usually in the leftmost tyre line and shoulder check when you hear a car coming.

The position tells the (lazy) brain what to do as it assumes you need as much space to the right as you've taken from the left, if you do get a close pass then you have wiggle room.

The shoulder check does two things, it lets the driver know that you know they are there and if there is a junction ahead it may cause them to think you intend to turn right. After the check, if it's safe move left maybe 10 to 30cm as if to say it's safe to pass me, they feel 'considered' so they give you plenty of room.

None of this will prevent the 1-2% of idiots from passing close. But wouldn't you rather have a metre of road than a foot if you need to be evasive in a hurry?

...

A study funded by the producer of a hi-vis jacket specially designed for that study finds that it works! What a surprise. Standard marketing technique which happens to disagree with any previous studies.

Couple of quotes from the paper itself:

"The bicycle jacket, cf. Figure 1, was designed specifically for the experiment and was a bright-coloured shell jacket with limited reflecting material on it. The goal was to create a visible jacket that the cyclists will consider smart and wanted to wear, not to create a jacket that would be considered a piece of safety equipment. The reason for this was that a safety efficient bicycle jacket will only improve traffic safety in practice if it finds a broad usage among the cyclists."

"The project was funded by TrygFonden who was also responsible for the design, production and distribution of jackets to the participants. The authors would like to take the opportunity to thank TrygFonden for the funding of and collaboration in this project."

How many of these Danish cyclists were taking the lane and riding in heavy traffic?

"HiViz works by reflecting UV light"
Are you sure about that KiwiMike? Human eyes cant see UV so what is the point of having clothing which reflects it? Are you sure that it does not reflect visible light?

Can't see colour of clothing making any real difference to attitude of UK motorists towards cyclists?

Now if we had automatic liability for motorists, you would see a dramatic change in attitude

HiViz works by reflecting UV light. If there's no UV - like at night - there's no benefit over wearing other light-coloured clothing.

Given Sweden is flipping dark for half the year, you'd expect to see a major seasonal variation. Unless the jackets also had significant reflective properties - not measured by area, rather placement and quality.

And the other points raised in the article too, WRT general driver behaviour and road design.

It's very, very rare to be hit by a car. 1/3 of people who were hit weren't wearing it. Ergo it didn't work for the 2/3 who were.

"the control group has 199 solo accidents and the test group has 150 solo accidents. This difference is statistically significant. This is surprising since the higher visibility provided by the jacket could hardly have had any influence on the number of solo accidents. An explanation to the fewer solo accidents in the test group could be that the participants in the experiment are volunteers who believe in the effect of the jacket and thus have been affected by their belief to report accidents in such a manner that the test group reported fewer accidents than they should have objectively and the control group most likely a bit more. This hypothesis is supported by the participants’ answers in the final questionnaire of the project.

So the people wearing the jackets thought they were Magic Jackets, and didn't want to report accidents for fear of letting down the Magic Jacket Team. Sorry, but when shit like this creeps in and statistically skews the results, you've gotta question the outcome overall.

Given all the above, and the lack of a real smoking gun, I'm calling Meh on this. 70-Lumen rear light for daylight riding, 30-Lumen + decent reflective schizzle for the dark. Roll.

They say "bright", but you can have bright that isn't hi-viz (my own preference, in fact). So is this really hi-viz?

Hi-viz just gives the bastards something to aim for.

I might be wrong, Danish drivers on seeing a cyclist wearing hi-viz respond and give room.
UK drivers on seeing a cyclist don't give a s**t and carry on as before.

Hence both studies are correct and the real question is not whether hi-viz works, but how to get drivers to give a s**t about other road users when they encounter them?

edit, didn't the UK study show a non trivial change in behaviour when the hi-viz had Polite printed on the back? This is the point.