Edit: to clarify: the message in the ad is actually ironic/satirical, mocking the advice for cyclists to wear high-viz at night.
It uses the same logic but inverts the parts and responsabilities, by suggesting to motorists (not cyclists) to apply bright paint on their cars.
So this ad is not pro or against high-viz, it’s against victim blaming
Cross-posted from: https://mastodon.uno/users/rivoluzioneurbanamobilita/statuses/113544508246569296
That bimmer looks sick
Not sure if the intended message is really coming through…
Seconding this opinion; I really wish non-commercial vehicles were prohibited from defaulting to black/white/silver/grey - being back the skittles colour palette!
So double consonant rule, that’s pronounced like dimmer but with a ‘b’, right?
Apparently (this is like 2nd/3rd hand and I could be misremembering) - BMW motorbikes are ‘Beemers’, while BMW cars are ‘Bimmers’ (rhymes with dimmers).
I’ve heard them used interchangeably, but I’ve got family who are into both the cars and the motorcycles so I may have been getting confused
To be fair, cars have headlight and taillights.
Here in Sweden cars are required to allways have their headlights on when the car is moving, making them far easier to see even during the day.
It us frankly one of the most annoying things about crossing the street when being abroad, cars having their headlights off during the day, it is much more difficult to see if a car is moving if it has the headlights turned off, than if they are on.
Right. You’re not going to see the car color at night.
Bikes have lights too though?
That is not a requirement, you to have to have front and rear reflectors, I don’t remember if side reflectors are required or not.
One thing that a lot of bikes has that is illegal here but ignored by the police, is a flashing front light.
Rear lights can absolutely be flashing, but front lights can’t.
They are actually required at night. https://www.transportstyrelsen.se/sv/vagtrafik/Trafikregler/Cyklist-mopedist-motorcyklist/Trafikregler/Regler-for-cykel/
Reflectors are also required.
And yeah the rear light can blink.
I still agree that cars are way more visible.
That is not a requirement
It is, actually: https://www.transportstyrelsen.se/sv/vagtrafik/trafikregler/cyklist-mopedist-motorcyklist/trafikregler/regler-for-cykel/
You’re liable to pay 500 SEK if you bike without lights when it’s dark outside.
Ah, nice, I didn’t know that!
The front lights are allowed to flash in Denmark and it’s super annoying, and dangerous in my opinion. The lowest allowed blinking frequency is also way lower than rear lights in Sweden, so it’s like being flashed by a camera repeatedly.
I still don’t understand why lights even have a flashing option
I assume it’s to catch people’s attention better
I find them annoying but I also used to find DRLs annoying and now I’m in favor of them as good safety, and I’ve not looked into the safety of flashing lights so I avoid taking a side on that one for now
Depends on the country you live in 😂 here they are absolutely required and also are not allowed to be blinking.
In Belgium at least they are required (reflectors aren’t on all styles of bikes), problem is that cyclists often have battery powered lights which are not very bright to the point you could say they are not even working. And in my experience it really renders cyclists invisible at night until you almost run into them.
In that sense high-viz vests definitely help because they usually make them stand out more than even normal lights.
Ofcourse this is mostly needed in the places with no separate infrastructure and no street lights.
As others have said, this depends on the jurisdiction.
In the UK, you have to have lights on at night: white at the front, red at the back. They can either be steady or blinking.
I think you’re also supposed to have orange reflectors on pedals which is consistent with orange flashers for slow traffic.
but I find it hard to buy decent pedals that actually met this requirement.
Their visibility is quite different tho
So is their mortality rate when they hit a pedestrian, and their speed.
Modern cars also tend to have daytime running lights that are switched on automatically when the ignition is turned on, and are meant purely for visibility.
With modern cars, you mean cars since some time early 2000s? Actual modern cars (5 yo cars), are the only ones I see not have headlights turned on during day time.
Apparently, it’s not required under EU law to have the headlights turned on during daytime, and manufactures will rather have a couple of cm longer milage…
not have headlights turned on
Running lights, not headlights. Different things both practically and legally.
Yesterday I was paying attention specifically to the front lights of cars. Almost all cars that had license plates registered in the last ten years also had independent running lights. Mostly in the form of a white LED strip around or under the headlight cover, an element built into the headlight (e.g. a ring around the main lens in BMWs), or annoyingly, a separate amber-colored light that I often mistake for a turning signal.
Legally, running lights might not even exist at all where I live. Traffic laws (and common sense) require proper headlights to be used in any kind of reduced visibility condition.
Ah, language barrier thing. Apologies
And in the States cars are required to have aode markers, as well.
Corner markers?
I remember that Volvo had those for a few years here, but that was in the very early 2000’s I haven’t seen the on normal cars for a long time.
Seems like a good idea though.
Whatever law required headlights on totally backfired. Rear lights are off and people don’t realize or don’t care, and now they won’t switch on the actual lights manually because there’s an automation.
IIRC there was only a short window when turning the rear lights off was a thing, and the law has since gone back to having to turn them on when the car is turned on. While there are still people in cars like that, they’re a minority.
Wait what? There are countries where you can drive without headlights?
E g. Germany
Only for motorcycles it is mandatory all day
Yes, here in Austria you are allowed to drive without headlights in bright conditions, only are required to turn them on when there is impaired visibility (night, rain, snow, fog, etc.).
Places I’ve lived in the US people keep them off as the default. Here in Seattle people don’t even turn them on at night half the time, I guess they think the street lighting is good enough. I try and signal people to turn on their lights if I’m biking at night and so far none that I know of have actually turned them on
ho, you are still using street ligths?
It’s been years that we cut them on a lot of major axis and after midnight in my town for all the classic roads.
It’s mainly to reduce the electricity bill, have less night pollution (more stars in the sky!) and reduce the speed of the cars when the road is empty (quite effective!).
Side note: since now few years, our cars are sold with front lights always active for visibility purpose (these small lights are cut only when we switching to the big ones)
At my previous apartment the lights outside were so bright it was unreal. Sixth floor, curtains, I could still read books at night without turning on an inside light. Can’t remember the last time I saw more than a dozen stars in the sky even at my new place. Light pollution is a very present thing here
It’s currently raining and foggy in SLC and probably 1/3 of the cars I passed on the road today had no lights at all. Almost hitting a grey car running dark in the fog does not put one in the holiday spirit.
Here in the U.S., (and I’m assuming it’s the same elsewhere, but just explaining for simplicity), cars used to have a simple headlight switch, which also lit up the instrument cluster on the dashboard. It was an easy heuristic: If you can’t see the gauges because it’s dark, turn on the headlights.
Now, every car has a marketing-gimmick dashboard lit up all the time with all sorts of multi-color lights. In the cars I’ve been in, the headlight indicator just a small, green light in the corner. Drivers accustomed to the old way think that their headlights are on because the dashboard is lit up. The Toyota Prius was notorious for this when it was new; I used to joke that they didn’t come with headlights as a way to save fuel.
It’s not as bad now, but people just forget o sometimes. It’s worse when cars have day-time running lights, because then the drivers see light coming from the front of the car and think all the marker lights are on.
One of my cars had running lights and always lit digital instrument cluster, but it still managed to hit that same heuristic, only in reverse: to be visible in the daylight, the instrument cluster had to get way brighter, so if the cluster feels absurdly bright, turn on the full headlights.
Nowadays, I think they include a light sensor to keep the cluster at a comfy level regardless of how bright it is, which I think should only be done for ones with automatic lights and only when they’re set to automatic mode, but sadly nobody ever asks my opinion about these things
It should be noted most models of cars have high-vis parts on them, usually on the rear, that work the same way.
I thought I bought a blue car. It was advertised as blue, paint job clearly said blue, the rendered image of the color was blue. My insurance paperwork states it is blue (as that’s what the NVIS calls it).
In real life, i have a black car. The blue pigment is so dark that is black, except in very specific, harsh lighting at certain angles. And then you can see it sparkles blue.
If only it had lights
(I know what community I’m in and that the original post is satire)
I mean, OP says it’s satire but then says they’re mocking the advice to wear hiviz. As if it isn’t the law pretty much everywhere to have functioning lights on a vehicle.
Did you not look at the car before buying it?
Arguably, if everything is high-viz, then cyclists may just blend in between the cars and be overlooked again. It does make sense that weaker participants in traffic are more visible, as long as everyone else is also visible.
I only wear hi-vis to take one more excuse away from the driver when they hit me. It doesn’t actually help people see me in my experience.
In my city, the roads are not lit very well so high vis helps me see bikers a lot better.
The number of dumbasses I see biking against traffic with no lights wearing black well after dark is too high for me to find this remotely serious.
Also, cars have a dozen reflectors, daytime running lights, and a ton of safety mechanisms.
Tldr: meme better, this is wrong and unsafe
A lot of the posts here read like the OPs don’t actually know anything about cars. Or roads. Or traffic laws. Or common sense.
Removed by mod
This user is a spam bot, FYI.
I don’t understand what this bot is for…
Can confirm. My car is that colour. Am yet to collide with a cyclist.
I mean I don’t mind the aesthetic.
I actually fully agree with the message. Bring back bright colors for cars!
Also participating in traffic at night is always a risk so wearing at least a bit of high-viz is just to minimize that. It’s not like we are wearing it in jobs for the look.
Because if too many people and things use hi-viz, that will make it regular-viz.
so some cyclist should wear black to help their fellow cyclists
Seeing as many people drive WITHOUT LIGHTS
I drive a Smart 451 which was silver initially. I can‘t count the amount of times that trucks and cars on the highway cut me off. At first I thought they were just assholes, but now I think its partly because its such a small car that the silver blends in with the street.
Two years ago, I wrapped my car in bright neon orange as part of an ad campaign from my company and it feels like I‘m getting noticed much more often. It‘s literally like a high vis west for my car.
Cars have lights on them?
Cars have lights on them?
Yes, yes they do.
Thank you I just needed to be sure.
Good question. Yes they do. Hope that helped!
Bikes have lights on them too.
Unless you’re in the Netherlands, where 2/3rds of the bikes will have the shitty “this is legally a light” LEDs from the convenience shops… Oh, and 2/3rds of those will be either out of battery, or installed facing the wrong way.
Must be a big city problem. I do see them, but the majority uses proper mounted lights.
One upside of those illegal fat bikes is that the lights usually work just fine, making them easy to see.
I’m in a university town, so it’s probably more of a problem here 😅
Ideally. In the US you regularly see peeps riding without even reflectors. It’s insanity.
That’s legally required? Every bike has a light on it by law?
Where? I haven’t seen a bicyclist using lights in months.
From my experience, usually they don’t. Even the ones that do aren’t to the same degree as a car is required to. I want biking to be better than driving, so this is not an anti-bike comment. Maybe we need to add a requirement for bikes to have lights like we require for cars?
In this thread: difference in worldwide laws. In the Netherlands you get fined 65+ eur per broken or missing light on your bike. Checks are frequent.
That’s good! I guess that’s the difference between viewing it as a utility vehicle and a recreational one. In the US it’s almost always seen as recreation only.
If it’s gonna be around other vehicles, it should have lights for the purpose of traffic negotiation.
With all all the ebikes out there it is trivial to add a headlight, brake lights, turn signals, and marker lights and require them to be used and maintained like any other road worthy vehicle.
