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.
Bikes have lights too though?
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.
Depends on the country you live in 😂 here they are absolutely required and also are not allowed to be blinking.
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.
Ah, nice, I didn’t know that!
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.
I still don’t understand why lights even have a flashing option
I assume it’s to catch people’s attention better
I find them annoying but I also used to find DRLs annoying and now I’m in favor of them as good safety, and I’ve not looked into the safety of flashing lights so I avoid taking a side on that one for now
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.
I think you’re also supposed to have orange reflectors on pedals which is consistent with orange flashers for slow traffic.
but I find it hard to buy decent pedals that actually met this requirement.
Yes, particularly difficult with clipless pedals, such that strictly speaking I think it’s illegal to ride at night with them!
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)
In California (Well, at least in LA County) it’s required by law for cyclists riding at night to have a bell, headlight, and reflectors. Different parts of the world are different though.
Source: Got a ticket once for no headlight.
Their visibility is quite different tho
So is their mortality rate when they hit a pedestrian, and their speed.
And what would be the point of your comment? The lights on a bike are for protecting the bike from cars, not pedestrians from bikes.
Wait what? There are countries where you can drive without headlights?
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)
At my previous apartment the lights outside were so bright it was unreal. Sixth floor, curtains, I could still read books at night without turning on an inside light. Can’t remember the last time I saw more than a dozen stars in the sky even at my new place. Light pollution is a very present thing here
It’s currently raining and foggy in SLC and probably 1/3 of the cars I passed on the road today had no lights at all. Almost hitting a grey car running dark in the fog does not put one in the holiday spirit.
Yes, here in Austria you are allowed to drive without headlights in bright conditions, only are required to turn them on when there is impaired visibility (night, rain, snow, fog, etc.).
E g. Germany
Only for motorcycles it is mandatory all day
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.
Ah, language barrier thing. Apologies
a separate amber-colored light that I often mistake for a turning signal.
This is almost as bad as the American cars that use one of the brake lights as a turn signal
And in the States cars are required to have side markers, as well.
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.
Side* markers. lol
They can be on the corners or not, i believe.
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.
IIRC there was only a short window when turning the rear lights off was a thing, and the law has since gone back to having to turn them on when the car is turned on. While there are still people in cars like that, they’re a minority.
Right. You’re not going to see the car color at night.
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.
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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.
As someone who has sat behind the wheel of an ambulance and various firetrucks, even those sirens aren’t enough to get other people on the road or sidewalks to pull their collective heads out of their arses long enough to pay attention to their surroundings and get out of the way. And it is possible to over drive the sound also. But cars tend to be so well sound insulated these days that it’s doubtful any bicycle siren is going to really be loud enough to get one’s attention.
We finally installed a “rumbler” on some of the vehicles to assist the siren and lights to get attention. A rumbler is a large speaker installed behind the grill and aimed downwards to the ground. When you hit the switch, it would emit a very low pitched note that would literally cause the ground to rumble and quake ahead of the vehicle as you drive. They have a limited usage life, so you only used it as needed to wake someone up long enough to get them out of the way.
But I’m personally of the opinion that bicycles should carry more lighting than they do. A headlight, rear facing marker/brake/turn signal lights should be a standard requirement for new bicycles. It would increase safety for everyone.
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“You can’t make stupid people safe.”
🤣
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.)
also grey and silver are boring as fuck
:(
carefully tucks my silver hair into a hat
on a car, not hair!
I think any bike intended for road use should be equipped with lights
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
Mine too.
The funny part is that it is actually “headlights on when wipers required”, which is quite strange. When I am in heavy rain and I have a freshly rainx’ed winshield, I don’t even need wipers. But I still need lights
Here in Spain is much simpler, if it’s cloudy lights go on. Anything besides a blue sky basically means lights on. Its way easier since you just always have them on and that’s basically it.
Yeah, that’s what I want. Car manufacturers should just have them be always on, and that turning them off uses some mechanic where you have to be in park or something. I’ve just seen too many people who don’t use them in the rain, and of course the folks who think their daytime lights are their headlights at night.
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.
My car is not even 20 years old, it does not have automatic wipers or lights. Lol. Also if someone turns them on manually, why is it bad that they don’t use auto mode?
They forget, obviously.
I don’t know what kind of car you have but I assume not one in north America?
Yes, one in North America. The USA specifically. You are tripping if you think 30 year old cars commonly feature automatic headlights
So… which one then? I’ve never seen a car without.
We have daylight running laws here as well, but those lights are different than the regular headlights and weaker.
In driving school they taught me to just put on my regular lights all the time.
They’re a lot stronger than the daylight ones and make you more visible
Cars have lights on them?
Bikes have lights on them too.
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.
I’m in a university town, so it’s probably more of a problem here 😅
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.
That’s good! I guess that’s the difference between viewing it as a utility vehicle and a recreational one. In the US it’s almost always seen as recreation only.
If it’s gonna be around other vehicles, it should have lights for the purpose of traffic negotiation.
With all all the ebikes out there it is trivial to add a headlight, brake lights, turn signals, and marker lights and require them to be used and maintained like any other road worthy vehicle.
Ideally. In the US you regularly see peeps riding without even reflectors. It’s insanity.
That’s legally required? Every bike has a light on it by law?
Where? I haven’t seen a bicyclist using lights in months.
Cars have lights on them?
Yes, yes they do.
Thank you I just needed to be sure.
No worries. I had to Google that one to be safe
Good question. Yes they do. Hope that helped!
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
A lot of the posts here read like the OPs don’t actually know anything about cars. Or roads. Or traffic laws. Or common sense.
I only wear hi-vis to take one more excuse away from the driver when they hit me. It doesn’t actually help people see me in my experience.
In my city, the roads are not lit very well so high vis helps me see bikers a lot better.
When I’m on the road, I want to be visible. On my red motorcycle I wear a bright yellow helmet and a jacket with hi-viz strips. The problem is that car manufacturers only offer boring colors and charge an exorbitant fee for a cool color if they offer them at all.
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A cyclist us never to blame for a car hitting a cyclist. It is always always always the drivers fault, because they chose to drive a car.
That’s an insane take, right? If I as a cyclist blindly ride across a road directly in front of a heavy vehicle, surely it’s on me. In what way would that be the heavy vehicle drivers fault?
I actually saw someone do this on El Camino Real in rush hour traffic. Probably the only reason they didn’t die is cars were going 20.
This ‘take’ is close to the law in NL. The shift in responsibility is there to even out the differences in safety mechanisms. The law acknowledges this disparity and seeks to provide additional protection to vulnerable road users. This rule encourages car drivers to exercise extra caution, knowing that they will likely bear legal responsibility in the event of an accident.
It’s important to note that the rule imposes strict liability, which means that the motorist is presumed responsible for damages unless evidence strongly indicates otherwise. If the cyclist is partially at fault (e.g., running a red light), liability might be shared, but the motorist is rarely absolved entirely.
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Again, insane comparisons, driving a heavy vehicle is in no way similar to intentionally assaulting someone. A more appropriate comparison might be if your lover was punching a punching bag and you dove in front of it mid hard swing, and they had no time to avoid hitting you. Is that your fault or theirs?
If a cyclist runs over a child, who was not visible at all until they ran into their path with no time to stop, on a path designated for bicycles where a pedestrian has no right to be, is the cyclist at fault?
Anyway I think I might be responding to a crazy person, so I’m probably wasting my time, but I’m interested in how deep it goes.
It’s not insane, even if it’s an unfamiliar concept. @invalid_name@lemm.ee is advocating for what is basically the legal concept known as strict liability. It means that a person is held liable for the consequences of an action, even in the absence of negligence or intent. American courts have applied it to things like crop dusting, or use of explosives, but this exact scenario is the law in the Netherlands. A driver hitting a bicyclist there is strictly liable for at least half of the damages in all unintentional crashes. (That is, when the driver can’t prove that bicyclist was trying to get hit.)
I’m not against the law you mentioned, in my opinion everyone should be driving/riding defensively and crashes are often a failure of both parties to some extent. Even if you’re technically at fault often the other party could have done something to avoid or minimise the accident.
The insane part was the comparison to scenarios where a party is clearly at fault. How is beating the shit out of a child anywhere near equivalent to hitting a cyclist that has blindly ridden in front of your car with no chance to have predicted it?
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Oy, here I thought that a “fuck car” was the motor vehicle analogue of a fuck boy.
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More like shooting a gun at a shooting range, where you have a space you’re supposed to shoot, and someone is running across that range and gets hit. Are you a murderer then?
I get the “fuck cars” mentality, I’m with you, but making bad arguments doesn’t help our cause.
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No, that’s a dumb take in all of the ways.
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OK weirdo
I actually fully agree with the message. Bring back bright colors for cars!
Also participating in traffic at night is always a risk so wearing at least a bit of high-viz is just to minimize that. It’s not like we are wearing it in jobs for the look.
Cars used to have lots of reflectors on them in the 1980 and 90’s. Especially I’m the head and taillight clusters.
Cars should also be required to have high vis strips like commercial vehicles.
Can confirm. My car is that colour. Am yet to collide with a cyclist.
I thought I bought a blue car. It was advertised as blue, paint job clearly said blue, the rendered image of the color was blue. My insurance paperwork states it is blue (as that’s what the NVIS calls it).
In real life, i have a black car. The blue pigment is so dark that is black, except in very specific, harsh lighting at certain angles. And then you can see it sparkles blue.
If only it had lights
(I know what community I’m in and that the original post is satire)
I mean, OP says it’s satire but then says they’re mocking the advice to wear hiviz. As if it isn’t the law pretty much everywhere to have functioning lights on a vehicle.
Did you not look at the car before buying it?
Cars should be bright as fuck. A bright red, orange, green, or yellow car stands out way more than the black, white, beige and gray shit that dominates the road.
I especially love those bright headlights that blind you and the ones that have flashing LEDs on their undercarriage to distract you. (But actually I mostly agree, just pointing out the extreme cases which universally suck)
I drive a Smart 451 which was silver initially. I can‘t count the amount of times that trucks and cars on the highway cut me off. At first I thought they were just assholes, but now I think its partly because its such a small car that the silver blends in with the street.
Two years ago, I wrapped my car in bright neon orange as part of an ad campaign from my company and it feels like I‘m getting noticed much more often. It‘s literally like a high vis west for my car.
Arguably, if everything is high-viz, then cyclists may just blend in between the cars and be overlooked again. It does make sense that weaker participants in traffic are more visible, as long as everyone else is also visible.
Seeing as many people drive WITHOUT LIGHTS
Which country? I have not seen a car build after 2005 that turn on the light automatically every time where the weather is a bit gloomy, let alone during the night.
