I Hate High Vis, But Should I Wear It?

I don't like high viz clothing there I've said it hate me in the comments all you want but High viz clothing makes me feel sad genuinely when I see a cyclist wearing a fluorescent jacket in the middle of the day in the height of Summer it makes me feel like there's something wrong with the world I feel sad that someone is getting on their bike putting on a piece of clothing like this like it's a flipping life jacket I feel sad that as cyclist we times feel the need to wear bright clothing like this in order to stay alive and no this is not about whether it's cool or not I literally don't care what I do care about is if wearing high Vis when cycling actually does what we hope it does so to find out I'm going to talk to a professor of vision science and what we find is that cyclist as well as pedestrians think they're visible or highly visible INF fluorescent clothing at night time and in fact they're not so you're thinking you're very visible but you're actually not and that Gap puts you into danger because you're behaving as if you're more visible she is going to explain how our Vision Works why so many of us aren't getting the full benefit from the high Vis that we are wearing but what we can do to fix that I am also though going to speak to a professor of psychology who also happens to be a record-breaking Ultra cyclist his take on hi is I can almost guarantee is going to get you thinking so if hundreds of people have successfully driven past you without hitting you and this one hits you why is it that we immediately ask what were you wearing as opposed to why that driver is different from the hundreds of others will they change my mind we'll find out by the end of this video before we start though please if you like this type of content then give this video a thumbs up just to let us know right then back to basics how does your vision work work Dr Joanne wood is a professor in the School of Optometry and vision science at Queensland University of Technology with extensive experience of research into vision and driving including establishing a dedicated research laboratory well the first thing is that we think we can see very well everywhere but in fact it's only about the central two degrees of our vision that's got very finely um detailed vision and can see color so the central part of your vision is a bit that actually sees detail so the rest of your vision can detect movement um but you don't see detail so in order to see detail you have to look at something so you can have your attention attracted for example with my hands in the air but to actually see that my fingers I actually have to have to look at them so our visual system is constantly scanning and as we cycle or drive we're scanning the road ahead we're using that Central detailed Vision but if we have something in the the edge of our vision or side Vision that attracts our attention then we will automatically look at it so our visual system is constantly scanning we're constantly as you know scanning the road system to be able to detect movement or bright things and it's then F it's only when we look in our central vision that we can actually tell that that's that something is a cyclist or it's a cone for example so we can differentiate the detail but I think the thing is to differentiate between visibility and conspicuity so something's visible it means you can detect it but if something's conspicuous it kind of grabs or attracts your attention so if we think of the road situation a driver can be driving along the road and they can see something ahead and it could be a reflective Ballard or a a reflective sign or it could be a bicyclist but they don't know what it is they don't know whether they've got to avoid it or not whereas if something's conspicuous it attracts their attention even if they weren't pre-warned and they know that they've got to do something about it so it sort of gives them a cue that there's something ahead in the road system that they need to potentially take some action around okay I get it it definitely seems clear and logical as well that you can improve your cons security and I completely understand the rationale for wanting someone to know what you are as well as the fact that you are just there but what's interesting is that I think a lot of what we perceive to be increasing our conspicuity might actually not be one of the biggest mistakes I think is assuming that a fluorescent vest is the answer so certain types of clothing are much more effective in the day so fluorescent clothing is effective in the day but isn't effective at night so if you're wearing fluorescent clothing in the day obviously um fluorescent materials convert the UV from sunlight which is invisible into visible and reflected light so you sort of have this pop of color but in the nighttime because there's no sunlight and there's not very much UV in headlights or Street lighting fluorescent materials don't pop out there's not that color pop but retroflexed materials um the light goes in um and it's reflected straight into the direction of the viewer so if you're wearing retrolective materials at night then you'll be seen as something bright so if you want to be detected you want and visible and conspicuous you need to wear fluorescent clothing in the day but you need to wear ret R flective clothing at nighttime so fluorescent clothing on its own without any retroflect of elements won't work it is incredibly important to remember then that fluorescent clothing does not work at night at night you need reflectives now Professor word has also given us another really valuable tip on how to dramatically increase our consur and we'll come on to that in a [Music] moment there is really really solid experimental evidence to show that wearing the right kind of high Vis can improve your conspicuity in scientific trials here's where things take a bit of a Twist does that experimental evidence translate from the pages of a scientific journal and into the real world because Professor Ian Walker doesn't think it's quite as clearcut what do you think to this it makes a lot of sense if you assume that collisions always happening because people just didn't spot the rider uh but if you think about it there's probably more than one way that collisions can happen with a driver and a cyclist uh and really if you think about it they tend to fall into three groups um there's going to be some collisions where the driver just didn't see the rider and if they had seen them it wouldn't have happened and highs might well be useful there uh but there's also going to be collisions where the driver did see you but misjudged the maneuver and you know like a bad overtaking maneuver or something like that and then there will also be a small number of collisions where the driver saw you and deliberately hit you and hbis is definitely not going to help in those circumstances so the real question becomes how many of these collisions are the first type where the driver just didn't see you and how many of the second type where the driver saw you but fluffed the driving maneuver uh they thought you were going slower or something like that um there is a bit of evidence on this there was a research of from Nottingham a few years ago who went to a hospital emergency room and essentially said well look if the collisions are the first type uh we we wouldn't see people coming in wearing high beers uh but what they found was that people coming into the hospital after cycling collisions were wearing high Vis or not wearing high Vis pretty much the same proportions as out on the street which suggests that wearing it wasn't really reducing the probability of collisions at all well that definitely goes against what a lot of us might think the conclusion of that paper by the way is this cons security AIDS may not be effective in reducing Collision crash risk for cyclists in highly motorized environments when used in the absence of other bicycle crash prevention measures such as increased segregation or lower motor vehicle speeds basically High Vis doesn't work bike paths do and lower speed limits now I put this to Professor wood and she said that yeah another piece of research from Canada that was very similar also showed similar results but that on closer inspection you could see that a lot of the collisions stemmed from people incorrectly wearing fluo clothing at night instead of retro reflectives during the day though that study showed that wearing bright clothing did significantly reduce Collision risks and the biggest study ever carried out into this subject which was done so in Denmark actually already one of the safest places on the planet in which to ride a bike concluded the same thing cyclists wearing a jacket with a mixture of fluro and retrolective like this one reduced their Collision Risk by 55% and that was looking at 7,000 people for a year although that study is also not without its critics they pointed out that the cyclists knew that they were taking part in the study and knew that they were wearing fluorescent kit and therefore that could introduce bias but either way when you look at all of the research it certainly seems like a bit of a mixed bag Professor Walker again if it if it were that obvious if it if it made a really substantial difference I'm not ruling out the idea that high Vis might make a small difference but if it made a really substantial difference that would just be obvious by now uh people wearing it would not get hurt and people not wearing it would get hurt I mean it's what we'd call a naked eye effect in the research World you'd just be able to see it if it was really substantial so if it does have an effect and maybe it does but it's not going to be a massive one because we would have known that just from observation by now I'll be honest I feel quite conflicted on the one hand I can see the logic behind the statement that increasing your conspicuity helps to make motorists aware of you and therefore able to avoid you but I can also see the logic behind the idea that if High visz worked people wearing high visz would not get hurt and therefore the issue of road safety lies Beyond cons security it lies Beyond highs and this then brings us very neatly to the point where I have previously disappeared down a rabbit hole the issue of victim blaming one other thing that I often think about when I'm riding is uh you know let's say you've been out for half an hour or an hour on the bike um how many d drivers have successfully gone past you or come in front of you at that point without hitting you and often it will be hundreds of drivers who have successfully interacted with you so something I often think is well if someone hit me now the question would almost certainly be what was Ian doing what was Ian wearing whereas really the question should be why did this driver hit me when all those others successfully didn't and it's an interesting one when it comes to the hiis discussion why the focus is so much on the person who gets hit as opposed to the one driver out of potentially hundreds who's done something different to all the rest Ian is definitely not wrong here that is frequently what happens in the event of a collision but fundamentally is it not also slightly missing the point I think we all agree that victim blaming is wrong but at the end of the day are we not actually just trying to maximize our own personal safety here maybe if you were wearing high ve that one in a million driver wouldn't have hit you either so is victim blaming a reason not to wear it a lot of um feedback about victim blaming and that it's not cyclist responsibility the reality is everybody's responsibility to try and make sure that cyclists are safe on the road system so I agree I wish that everybody didn't have to do that but I think realistically cyclists don't come out of crashes well and we know that their fatality rates are high but even if they don't have a ferality the severity of injuries is so high that I think anybody who's doing aot is exposed Aid on the road systems should be wearing some method fluorescent and retroflect seems hard to argue with that doesn't it a bit like wearing helmets some people say that the evidence of them being effective in the real world is limited but you might as well wear one cuz it's no great hardship and if it is going to help it's really going to help help now I did say at the beginning there was one last piece of Vital Information that could help to improve your cons security and I'm going to bring it in now because I also think it can help to deescalate this issue of victim blaming cuz actually being conspicuous on the bike doesn't just mean having to wear a fluo and reflective jacket it doesn't take much to make yourself conspicuous you don't have to have loads a lot of people think oh I've got to have a 100 lights or I've got to have this huge big yellow jacket or I've got to do all this stuff it the visual system is very sensitive so you only need a certain amount of material and as long as it's moving on your movable joints so as observers or humans we're very sensitive to biological motion and that's true for pedestrians as well so pedestrians if they wear markers on their wrists and elbows knees and um an ankles and also on their hips they'll be very um obviously a person because the visual system is sort of tuned to movement and we can recognize that very easily that a person is present so if you're wearing your retroflexed material you're going to be more visible at night than in the day than fluorescent but if you actually put the material on the movable joints it significantly increases your conspicuity and in studies we've done we've shown that if you add reflectors on the knees and ankles and add that to a vest it makes a huge difference to the distance which a driver first detects recognizes that a person is present biological motion is very strong for pedestrians that is we your retroflect of material on your movable joints and for cyclists it's particularly the case for ankles and knees so after all of that it turns out that are lots of us who might have been thinking that we've been taking every precaution possible have actually been doing it wrong anyway so remember highlight your feet your ankles and your knees it has taken a long time to put this video together so I have had a lot of time to think about it and my perspective on hi has definitely changed I consider it more now and particularly I consider how it's used there is a whole load of misinformation out there so remember bright clothes in the day reflectives at night and highlight those movable joints so yes once again your feet your ankle s and your needs and remember too this point about victim blaming as cyclists I think it's our responsibility to try and correct this car Centric culture where we can rounding on another cyclist who might not be wearing high Vis is absolutely not the answer it is arrogant at best and at worst it feeds into this rhetoric that it's down to us to protect ourselves when in reality it's just one component one small part of thiss bigger picture however dangerous you might sometimes feel cycling is and however dangerous other people can make you feel that cycling is and how you have to wear a helmet and you have to wear high ve because motorists are hellbent on our destruction the statistics do not back it up now it pains me that there are any accidents involving cyclists at all but it is much much safer than most of us think and also it's imperative that remember that sitting in our cars does not make us safer either no matter how it might feel being sedentary it roads your long-term Health to the extent where actually you are far safer out on the roads getting exercise and riding your bike now firstly huge thanks to Professor wood and Professor Walker for their contributions and their time and help in making this video I'm super interested to hear your thoughts on this subject what's your approach to Hive is has this video made you change what you do or will you consider doing so what are your views on other people wearing hi just get involved in the comments section I will join you down there for what's hopefully going to be a very interesting debate and lastly please do make sure you give this video a big thumbs up if you've enjoyed it and as I said at the start if you enjoy this type of content too

Channel: Global Cycling Network

Views: 160,992

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Id: 33GpfTWdk8U

Length: 17min 25sec (1045 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 16 2024