Comment by groby_b | Hacker News Reader

Comment by groby_b | Hacker News Reader

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This is a core point.

It most stuck out to me when the article talked about car colors - most cars are black or white because car makers mostly make black or white. Buying a car with a splash of color is hard. Red is your best chance. Followed by butt-ugly blues.

You cannot meaningfully choose according to your taste because choice is restricted. (Related, try to buy furniture that isn't a fucking cheap imitation of mid-century modern)

And that happened because offerening the most bland and inoffensive looks will be bought by the vast majority of people who don't care about taste, or don't have any. (How would you develop taste if all the choices are the same)

It's bland things for bland lives reinforcing more bland choices in product design. Mixing all colors gets a dull grey, and that's where we're landing.

Safety is an under appreciated function of car color. I've had a number of same looking cars of different color. I noticed that driving a white version results in substantially less near miss/near accidents while driving.

I will only buy white cars now because of this. I'm tired of dodging inattentive drivers that are sleepdriving through their commute or whatever they are doing besides driving.

This ^

I read once that grey cars have the highest possibility of accidents for this exact reason.

And since then have only driven white cars.

Thats funny because I didn't know that was a stat however I definitely noticed that my grey car was like an accident magnet from real life experience.

Yellow cars actually have the lowest rate of accidents, although it's not that common to find in a standard range of most cars.

Is that excluding or including cabs, which are yellow in many countries with few other cars being yellow?

Manufacturers mostly make black or white cars because that's what people want. Modern culture has made people so boringly conventional that there's no point in manufacturers painting on different colours, so they charge a premium or don't do it at all. Your explanation fails to explain why exactly the same trend is happening in fashion. Is there some conspiracy where clothing manufacturers are trying to restrict choice in clothing, too? At some point, you have to question the culture at large rather than individual industries.

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