Being Visible on the Road During the Day?
05-21-18, 10:40 AM
#26
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They obviously weren't looking, then. "I didn't see him" is the go-to excuse for when someone's busy texting or posting something to Facebook while driving, or otherwise distracted.
05-21-18, 10:46 AM
#27
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I absolutely agree. I am sending a victim impact statement to the DA that says, in part:
and later in the statement:
Mr. XXXX’s comment at the scene and to the responding officer was that he was changing lanes to the right and didn’t see me. I am at a loss as to what more I could have done to ensure that Mr. XXXX saw me on the road. As he approached the intersection to make his left-hand turn my bright flashing headlight was pointed at him. As he approached me from the rear after his turn, he should have seen two very bright red flashing lights, a human torso covered in high-visibility yellow cloth and the movement of two high-visibility shoes. My only conclusion is that Mr. XXXX’s attention was being held by something other than driving his vehicle.
Please note that I have referred to this occurrence as a crash and not as an accident. Accidents are unavoidable. This crash was very avoidable with even the barest of minimum of attention to the primary duty of drivers – not hitting anything else with their vehicles. I respectfully ask that you prosecute, and the judge sentence, with this in mind.
05-21-18, 10:41 PM
#28
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Good luck during the day...if someone isn't paying attention then no amount of strobes/hi vis/safe positioning will save you. It's always a safe bet to do what you can, but in my experience the law of diminishing returns, if plotted on a graph, hits steep and soon. My experience in cities both big a small is that daytime cage commuters mostly care more about hitting the next green/yellow or getting ahead one or two more car lengths than caring anything about your safety. Night commuting is a different story - I worked 4-midnight for years, and always found that drivers treated me with much more consideration on the way home. Whether this is due to there being less traffic or that my hi-viz/lights stand out more in the dark, or some combination of both, is somewhat difficult to parse out.
05-22-18, 09:21 AM
#29
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It's kind of counter-intuitive that drivers would be able to 'see' you better at night but I feel the same way. During the day regardless of what you're wearing or what you're flashing front or back you just blend into the traffic and landscape. There's not a whole lot you can do to make yourself stand out any more with lights or hi-vis; you're not going to attract much more attention compared to wearing just regular attire and no lights. The driver who will see you will see you because he is paying attention to the road. The driver who doesn't see you won't see you because he's not paying attention--texting, fiddling with the radio knobs, doing make-up, eating, whatever.
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