Walk into almost any bike shop and you’ll likely find your attention drawn (quite literally) to a rack of brightly colored clothing. Over in the accessories department,an increasing amount of shelf space is devoted to lights. These products are not new, of course. But their appeal within the cycling community has shot up overthe past five years.
Before that, only hardcore commutersand 24-hour racers bought lights. Meanwhile, clothing in bright neon hues, like Pearl Izumi’s Screaming Yellow, has been a durable favorite of the charity-ride set for so long, it’s almost a cliché. But you’d never find it in most ٲ-DzԲdzܲ’kits.
Over the past tenyears, on-road fatalities among cyclists have steadily , accompanied by an increasing sense of danger that’s led many recreational riders to to wear moremore fluorescent high-visabilityclothingand start usingdaytime running lights. Even famously core brands like Castelli and Rapha, which favor simple andoften dark-hueddesigns, now make items in bright yellows, oranges, and pinks. The advent of LEDsand improving battery densities havealso made lights brighter, more compact, and more affordable than ever. They’reavailable from more companies, which are about selling visibility as a safety aid.
This trend has come about courtesy of a line of scientific researchknown broadly as conspicuity. Asolid amount of evidence suggests that high-vis gear. But the rise of another, more significantfactor in traffic safety—driver distraction—casts doubt on how effective conspicuity is for improving safety. Worse, the increasing adoption of these technologies may lead to even more victim blaming. It’s worth asking: Is all this gear worth the investment?
Why High-VisWorks
The point of high-visgear is twofold. First, the brightness helps us stand out from our environment, which enhances our visual conspicuity. This is why construction signs are bright orange.Second, when worn on the right parts of your body, high-visor reflective clothinghelps drivers to intuitively recognize us as humans as opposed to inanimate objects like road signs. This is called cognitive conspicuity. Humans are highly attuned to biological motion; it’s part of how we identify objects.
Rick Tyrrell, a psychologist who runs Clemson University’s Visual Perception and Performance Lab, is among the academic researchers whoseinsights have decisions from companies like Bontrager. A 2017 study by a researcher in Tyrrell’s group found that fluorescent yellow leg warmers compared to traditional black leg warmers.
Basically:concentrating fluorescent and reflective elements at locations like thefeet and knees, rather than covering yourself head-to-toe in bright yellow, draws attention to the human gait or pedaling motion. This cues the driver’s brain to accurately and quickly identify us as cyclists rather than road signs or mailboxes. In real life, this means a driver can plan and react accordingly to what they see, since mailboxes rarely take the lane to prepare for a left turn.
All of thisinformation forms the basis for my own setup. I use Bontrager’s and front and rear lights ($40 each), which feature various steady and flashing modes, with different intensities for day and nighttime use. (Note that Washington State).
I wear a fluorescent yellow or orange helmet, specifically the ($150)and($200). Although yourhead doesn’t move much while cycling, I figure that having something bright up high is helpful. My Specialized shoes are bright yellow and orange. Bright socks would be , especially the taller ones that are in style now. I’ve alsoadded reflective decals to both my helmet and shoes, and I use fluorescent gloves ($36), which I feel might help when signaling turns.
Essentially, Ido everything I can to raise my visibility on the roads. I’m also aware that the benefits of wearing high-visclothing and lights may be marginal.
Why High-Vis SometimesDoesn’t Work
Fluorescent clothing only helps during the day. Fluorescence relies on reflecting UV light back out in the visible spectrum, which makes a fabric color seem brighter. But there are no sources of UV light at night, so in the dark, even the most intensely bright jacketis no more visiblethan a nonfluoroscent version. What’s more, some recent studies that, in the daytime, drivers gave cyclists wearing high-visgear no more passing room than conventionally dressed riders.
In low light, you arebetter served by reflective gear. Unfortunately, most of what passes for reflective elements on cycling clothing today—small patches, logos, and piping—isn’t large enough to matter. American National Standards Institute of reflective material for roadside workers is 155 square inches, or roughly a 10-by-15-inch rectangle. Even some commuter packs lack thatmuch reflective fabric. Your best bet may bea DIY approach,using reflective sticker kits for helmets, shoes, bags, and bike parts.
Lights, too, are essential at night, but only if they’re powerful enough. “Be seen” lights for making youvisible to drivers, as opposed to lightsthat are bright enough to help you see in the dark,only need to meet minimum legal requirements, which vary by state and aren’t always clear. Personal experience has taught me that those lights often are not bright enough to compete with streetlightsand don’t cast enough light to safely illuminate your route on obscurebike paths.
But the big reason I fear thatconspicuity is of limited benefit is that it only matters when the driver is actually looking at the road.
Distracted driving is not a new problem, and drivers’ explanations for why they’ve hit a cyclist are often variations of“I didn’t see them” or “Theycame out of nowhere.” (Spoiler: no, theydidn’t.)But this is happening more often becausemodern device-based distraction is crucially different than just letting your mind wander as you gaze down the road behind the wheel. Todaywe’re often cognitively, visually, and even manually distracted from driving.
A study coauthored by Tyrrelllast yearfound that .And a doctoralthesispublished at Indiana University of Pennsylvania studyinghow a flashing motorcycle taillight impacted attention in simulated driving-while-texting situations found that the flash . Thoseresults suggest that simply making yourself more visible often doesn’t overcome driver distraction. Anecdotally, there are hundreds of examples of crashes that conspicuity should have prevented: drivers running into , into police cars festooned with high-vis and reflective decals, or into , which shouldn’t need any conspicuity aids.
No media outlet reports that a pickup that got T-bonedwas a dark coloror that a motorcycle didn’t have its daytime running lights on at the time of a crash. But stories about pedestrians or cyclists being hit sometimes note whether the victimswere wearing light or dark clothing (even in the daytime),and they commonly state whether the victimswere in a marked bike lane or crosswalkor if the cyclist was not wearing a helmet. Even the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s own official recommendations for and include a reminder to wear brightly colored clothing, even in the daytime.
These are all subtle but unmistakable means of transferring some of the blame for the crash. Yes, pedestrians and cyclists are sometimes at fault in crashes. But rather than waiting for facts or looking at contributing issues like a lack of protected bike lanes or sufficientstreet lighting.
SoWhat Do We Do?
As a cyclist, I’m trying to do whatever I can to help keep myself safe. As a cycling writer, I’m trying to give people tools to do the same, without shilling gear for gear’s sake, suggesting that you’re somehow at fault if you don’t have these items and are hit,or promising that if you just buy this one thing, you’ll be safer.
The truth is, I don’t know what the answer is. I try to be realistic about conspicuity aids. When drivers are paying attention, evidence suggests that high-vispieces seem to be beneficial. At this point, I’ll admit that part of the reason I use them is simply to foreclose any “he was wearing dark clothing” narrative that might emerge in police and media reports if I am hit. Similarly, I now use a cycling computer, even though I’m rarely on Strava; I want a record of my ride, so that someone can use it to reconstruct what happened in the event thatI am hit and killed. I’m considering a rearview camera like for the same reason.
That’s all grim, I’lladmit. I’ll also admit that in the past tenyears, my riding has changed dramatically to minimize my contact with cars. There are old routes I never do anymoreand roads I will ride only at certain times to avoid peak traffic or bad light. But here in Boulder, Colorado, as in many parts of the country, you need to ride paved roads to reach quiet dirt ones, and I’ll be honest that I still love the pavement, too. I love the hiss of tires ona corner, the rhythm of a long climb, and the weightless, flight-like sensation of a curvy descent on smooth tarmac.
I’m playing a kind of actuarial game here. On any given ride, my odds of being hit are something likeX in 1,000. Anything I can do to lower those odds, even slightly, I’ll take, even if I know the benefit may be vanishingly small. But I’ll do it, because short of giving up road riding, it’s what I’ve got.
Note: There’s a debate about whether or not cyclists should use flashing lights due to the potential effect on people with photosensitiveepilepsy, which is particularly triggered by deep-red colors, like taillights. The issue is serious, albeit not common. Active epilepsy of all forms is present in in the U.S.—1.2 percent of the population—and sometimes necessitates driving restrictions. Photosensitive epilepsy is rarer still: EEGdata suggeststhat as few as 100,000 Americans have it. But the Epilepsy Foundation cautionsthat it may be underdiagnosed, with a real figure as high as 800,000. These peoples’ sensitivityto bike lights and the potential consequences are serious. Disregarding legitimate medical concerns just because a condition is uncommon would be cruel. that to avoid triggering seizures, strobe frequency should be no more than three flashes a second. Of the three prominent light makers I contacted, only Bontragerhad taken photosensitive epilepsy into account in its design process, although Specializedhas a flash rate that falls within the safe range. If you’re concerned, you can use the stopwatch function on your smartphone to count flashes during a ten-second sample, then divide by tento get the per-second rate.