Hi-vis clothing for cyclists does not reduce number of crashes
cyclingweekly.com
cyclingweekly.com
I'm seeing so many modern bikes in the street and they all feature bright LED lights that quite often even are far too bright for traffic as soon as they're improperly adjusted and motorists still manage to miss these mobile torches.
- For a virus, other than burn-out or vaccine (SARS-Cov-1 burned out; SARS-Cov-2 likely won't), the number of dead people is basically independent of measures -- masks and lockdowns can change the distribution over time, but to first order, that's all they can do; (2nd order effects - collapse of the medical system, and development of better treatments such as clonal antibodies, vitamin D, etc - are also important, of course, and that's why we should employ masks and lockdowns - but we should measure their effect realistically compared to what they can actually achieve)
- In a communication channel, the SnR is roughly speaking the only thing that determines the channel capacity. Knowing where the noise signal has been disruptive turns out to not change that capacity. (Although, again there is a 2nd order effect - if you can tell where and how the noise had been disruptive, you can considerably simplify the design of the transmitter and the receiver - but not increase the capacity).
It's the difference between accidental and inherent complexity. I'm not saying that people's inattention is inherent -- it can be changed; however, given a level of inattention which is likely the inherent cause of accidents, high visibility clothing will possibly change the distribution of accidents over road kinds and time-of-day, but not their overall numbers.
Except this is completely wrong. Herd immunity for covid-19 requires ballpark ~70-90% of the population to be immune, assuming no distancing. In New Zealand, less than 0.04% of the population has had covid-19, and they have no vaccine. Yet they also have essentially no new cases.
Taking what you're saying to it's logical extreme, you're arguing that no medical intervention can reduce infections of a disease.
New Zealand can only maintain being infection free by remaining disconnected. This is not a long term solution. If they are lucky, they’ll be able to maintain it until an effective vaccine is widely available.
If one is never available then they will only be able to maintain it by total disconnection from the world, even if the rest of the world has herd immunity. Which would probably be much more harmful economically in the long term than the virus would.
What I am saying, is without cure or vaccine there is no long term feasible solution other than to get it, and that would only change distribution of disease outcomes over time (to first order)
Also the 70-90% is based on assumptions that do not bear out in practice, as they ignore T-cell and cross reactivity which are known to have an affect. (I do not know of a reliable estimation, but when one is figured out it can easily be in the 20%-50% range)
What you're saying is like saying "the only way to have no technical debt is to have no code. You have code. I have code. Therefore there is nothing meaningful we can do besides pray for a world in which we don't need code, because stuff like refactoring only moves tech debt around".
Consider two universes in which we both get a vaccine in two years. In one, people get infected at a rate of x. In another, they get infected at a rate of 2x. In neither universe does the x or 2x exceed the number of infectable people. Doesn't one universe have half as many people infected?
Herd immunity doesn't mean the disease disappears completely or that everyone is immune. It means, however, that if someone does get, the number of people that they can transitively infect is limited by a constant independent of the population size. If US, UK, Australia, Sweden, ... have herd immunity due to disease, and NZ doesn't, it means that NZ cannot afford travel (and many kinds of exports) to or from the rest of the world.
> Doesn't one universe have half as many people infected?
You insist on misreading and/or misrepresenting my claim. I specifically said "other than vaccine", which you obviously did read because you asked "what makes a vaccine special". Why would you do that?
Take those two universes, but in which there is no vaccine in two years, or in which "x" does exceed the number of infectable people. Does lockdown, or even masks, change the overall outcome? Or just the speed over time in which the dead and long-term residuals accumulate?
A handful of countries (New Zealand, Vietnam, and a few more) have some chance to stay in your universe. Most of the world already has, after 6 months of serious (and economically catastrophic lockdowns), over 10% infected. It is not unreasonable, that if an effective vaccine is not effectively administered within those two years, we'll have 50% infected.
I didn't see quoted any stats about the wearing of hi-vis clothing. Just the assumption that legislation would lead to increased use.
The study was done by a psychologist. Maybe that explains it.
From the paper abstract:
>Lack of knowledge on how the law was introduced, the degree of enforcement by the police, and behavioral changes in response to the law makes it difficult to attribute the lack of effect on bicycle crashes.
This study is about the “number of bicycle and motorized vehicle collisions” reported in such a way as to be collated by the Italian government’s National Statistics department.
None of my bike crashes, thankfully, have been sufficiently hairy as to require they be reported to the authorities. They would never have made it into a government database.
For example, perhaps everyone who would obey such a law is already wearing high viz.
As a cyclist, in terms of colour I'll only ever buy yellow kind, because as a driver I feel like this stands out much better than any others (greens, oranges, pinks). And I make sure to buy items which are as bright as possible.
I also strongly feel that the current trend for using "silver" retroreflective fabric for entire products (as opposed to contrast panels) is a really bad one. In my experience as a driver, the light bouncing off, for example, a completely retroreflective jacket appears "flat". This reduces any perception of depth and means it takes noticeably longer to process and understand what it is am I looking at and react accordingly.
Just a random video, but imagine seeing just this jacket from 30 metres away - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVfUkCSw9Ew
In the old not so good days a driver could encounter at night a horse driven buggy with no lights or reflective elements whatsoever. Just few days ago at night while going downhill on a steep road I have seen a well camouflaged hiker walking on my side of the road and stepping aside luckily in time.
I will take reflective vest on a biker/pedestrian/hell, even on a horse anytime I am driving/biking and can hit them after spotting them too late.
More cyclist means less incidents (per capita). Something about safety in numbers and culture adjusting to new reality.
More mom cyclists. Something about perception management, where hard core cyclists trigger resentment and mom cyclists gets automobilists to calm down.
Set asides for cyclists. The Dutch model. I haven't experienced it, so take with salt grains. The half measures in my city may have helped, but mostly they still suck. Too many "railroad crossings", broken continuity.
Please always use lights, but if all the jacket is doing is making a person more visible, then there should be a similar increase to having lights when only the jacket is used.
Cars are dangerous, and the people who are driving them are probably tired from a long day of work, thinking about what they'll cook for dinner, or even worse distracted by their phone. I agree that drivers should be giving full attention to the road and checking carefully before every movement, but that's not reality - do what you can to make it easier for them to see you.
If you are coming from behind a car at night without a light, the car won't see you. If it needs to turn across your path, the high vis alone will not make you visible. Same if cars are coming towards you. My city has a lot of streets that are bus lanes in one direction. If you are cycling along here at 20km/h a car turning left probably won't see you without lights, given you are much smaller than what they would expect to see there (a bus).
The only case where I can see high vis being useful, where a light would not, is if a car is coming at you from the side.
But while it's impressive, it's borderline useless for rear-view mirrors, which do not shine a light back at the cyclist.
Not sure I understand what you're getting at here. Retroreflective strips reflect light back from the source to the viewer. In the case of a rear-view mirror, the light source is the tail light of the vehicle, which will hit the retroreflective material, reflect that back towards the vehicle where it will be seen by the driver in their rear-view mirror.
Please don't use blinking lights only. Due to the blinking others cannot estimate your location and speed. We humans can track a continuous light source pretty well, opposed do a blinking one.
Did the total number of the road accidents stayed the same in the whole period?
Number of kliometers driven per year?
Number of the cyclists on the road?