Using reflective clothing to enhance the conspicuity of bicyclists at night

Abstract

Bicycling at night is more dangerous than in the daytime and poor conspicuity is likely to be a contributing factor. The use of reflective markings on a pedestrian's major joints to facilitate the perception of biological motion has been shown to greatly enhance pedestrian conspicuity at night, but few corresponding data exist for bicyclists. Twelve younger and twelve older participants drove around a closed-road circuit at night and indicated when they first recognized a bicyclist who wore black clothing either alone, or together with a reflective bicycling vest, or a vest plus ankle and knee reflectors. The bicyclist pedalled in place on a bicycle that had either a static or flashing light, or no light on the handlebars. Bicyclist clothing significantly affected conspicuity; drivers responded to bicyclists wearing the vest plus ankle and knee reflectors at significantly longer distances than when the bicyclist wore the vest alone or black clothing without a vest. Older drivers responded to bicyclists less often and at shorter distances than younger drivers. The presence of a bicycle light, whether static or flashing, did not enhance the conspicuity of the bicyclist; this may result in bicyclists who use a bicycle light being overconfident of their own conspicuity at night. The implications of our findings are that ankle and knee markings are a simple and very effective approach for enhancing bicyclist conspicuity at night.

How similar are two-unit bicycle and motorcycle crashes?

“…However, night-time conspicuity improvement treatments, such as retro-reflective vests and markers, were found to produce mixed findings for motorcycles, as identified in Haque et al (2012). For bicycles, on the other hand, use of reflective vests and markers (Thornley et al, 2008;Wood et al, 2009) and ankle and knee reflectors (Wood et al, 2012) were found to be generally effective. Bicycle lights were also found to reduce crashes by increasing their visibility during daylight and twilight periods, but no such effects seen for night time (Madsen et al, 2013).…”

“…Increasing the conspicuity of riders and two-wheelers to improve safety has been recommended in a number of studies (Haque et al, 2012;Pai et al, 2009;Thornley et al, 2008;Wood et al, 2009;Yuan, 2000). In addition to headlight (static or blinking), reflective vest, and reflective markings on two-wheelers, researchers (Wood et al, 2012) have suggested use of ankle and knee reflectors for bicyclists. Enforcement of mandatory bicycle lights at night by imposing fines, as practised in the Netherlands (Wegman and Aarts, 2006), could discourage bicycle riding at night without lights.…”

Exposure measurement in bicycle safety analysis: A review of the literature

“…However, several studies showed that wearing protective clothing reduces accident severity, presumably in collision situations (Persaud et al, 2012;Wood et al, 2012;Amoros et al, 2012;Berg and Westerling, 2007). In order to reduce the RR of bicycle accidents, a greater range of guidelines and measures are needed.…”

A roadmap for interpreting the literature on vision and driving

“…Because closed road studies allow for the repetition of orchestrated stimulus events and trials, they provide good estimates about specific driver competences as a function of visual status; for example, they can establish the distance at which a pedestrian or cyclist can be detected or a road-sign can be read. 20, 127, 152, 153 Closed-road designs can be viewed as “proof-of-concept” studies in that they demonstrate under near-laboratory, highly controlled conditions, how vision impacts performance while the participant drives and controls a real vehicle. On the other hand, closed road studies do not allow for confident generalizations to the open road where the driving environment is highly complex and often chaotic.…”