I would like to make a…

I would like to make a comment about bright clothing to be worn by cyclists. There are an average of 74 cyclists deaths annually across Canada. Most deaths are in Ontario. I believe that cyclists should have to wear high-visibility yellow or high-visibility orange. I have provided high-visibility safety vests to foreign workers in Brant for their safety on the highways and in Norfolk, the police provide the vests to the cyclists. Thousands of foreign workers ride bicycles when they are here in the spring, summer and fall. The appearance of a cyclist who is wearing the black and white clothing or colours that blend with the pavement or surroundings is a death wish for the cyclist.

In optical engineering, conspicuity is the study of what makes things "conspicuous," and some researchers split the tasks into "detection" and "identification" Because the rods and cones in our eyes have differential sensitivity to light and color, some colors are more easily detected in low-light conditions, such as dusk or dawn (the rods are more sensitive than the cones but are essentially insensitive to color -- that's why all cats are grey in the dark). However there's still the "identification" task, and that's where the choice among high-visibility, naturally-rare, colors matters.

In general, in order to be conspicuous, you want both to be detected from a distance and to be identified as a cyclist. Experiments with the visually impaired (and color blind) show that contrast is the key. Contrast can be achieved by shape, motion (which is why emergency vehicles have blinking lights: to achieve "optical" motion), and color. (The small blinking lights on bicycles are not effective in the rural areas.) What this means is that the color you wear should be differentiable from the background, so you want a color that is both detectable in a crowded visual field and also that is uncommon -- or rather, uncommon compared to other objects in the visual field but common to cyclists so that you can be identified as one. The fluorescent colors of high-visibility yellow-green and high-visibility orange are pretty unnatural so the likelihood that it will be "lost" in the visual field is low but in addition, the fluorescent yellow-green seems to be commonly used only by cyclists and emergency workers (like firemen) -- at least, in the US. Conversely, hunters wear orange both because it's not just a good idea, it's THE LAW, but also because it's instantly identifiable by the conventions of hunting.

So the bottom line is that both are detectable though there may be some (slight) advantage to using the color that is most commonly associated in the public view with cyclists since it is both highly detectable and also identifiable.

I recommend that the law require that the cyclists wear clothing or vest or other device of a particular shape or color so that drivers can instantly recognize a cyclist. Specifically high-visibility yellow or high-visibility orange.

[Original Comment ID: 209264]