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Comment by hahainternet | Hacker News Reader

I ride an almost entirely black bike with no reflectors and often no lights. Mostly because I don't use it at night unless I have no other choice. I'm interested by this paint for that exact reason.

Your assumptions don't really hold up that well.

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His assumption holds up perfectly well. When I was in High School I had job where I drove around and made deliveries on Friday nights. Nothing sketchy, but I was out after dark a lot. During my two years doing that job, I almost hit cyclists a dozen times because they were wearing all dark colors, had few or no reflectors, no bike light and were riding on roads with no street lights. I never saw a single cyclist with a bike light (which is required by law in my city) the entire time I had this job. This has changed in the last couple years as I have seen several bikes with lights, something I am pretty happy about because I'm a cyclist too. My bike is white, has no reflectors (its a mountain bike primarily for trail use) and I refuse to ride at night because I know exactly how invisible I would be.

As someone else who has also nearly hit one of these fucktards (on a two lane road with a 60mph speed limit), perhaps his assumptions are not wrong, but you are an outlier.

Perhaps it's sharing too much, but the only thing that saved his life was a car half a mile in front of me making an emergency swerve that clued me in to something abnormal in that area - but I thought it was a deer and was about to resume normal vigilance by the time I caught up with the biker. An oncoming train was in just the wrong spot to let me see him by his reflectors.

FWIW The Hurt Report[1] didn't find any link between motorcycle colours and crash numbers. I'd say that doubly applies to bicycles when you consider that even a small motorbike still has a fairly significant showing of coloured fairings. Reflective jackets on the other hand...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MOTORCYCLE_ACCIDENT_...

A motorbike is mandated to have lights and cops enforce this, in contrast to bikes where most cops tend to let Darwinian evolution happen.

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