Retro reflectives and their impact on accident rates is still pretty contentious within the bicycle community, and personally, I think it gives people a false and very dangerous sense of security and visibility.<p>As a daily bicycle commuter and motorcyclist, the only rule I follow is that I am invisible when on two wheels. So I ride in a way that makes me safe, and that usually means doing things that most people would probably find dangerous.<p>In over 15 years of daily commuting (yes, all through the winter, too) I've been hit a half dozen times. The majority of those accidents were intentionally caused by the car driver, only a couple were truly faultless. None of them were the result of the driver <i>not</i> seeing me, they were all the result of the driver behaving badly.<p>A reflective jacket or spray isn't going to do ANYTHING if the driver decides that they own the lane and they're okay mowing you down to get it. That to me is the big flaw with any conspicuity safety measure, it relies on drivers actually being aware of the road around them and honoring your use of it. At least around here in DC, those two things are seldom present.<p>Most riders are foolishly naive about their safety. Traffic laws aren't going to keep your head from bouncing off a hood, and a reflective vest isn't going to make the driver put down their cell phone and pay attention to the road.
I occasionally cycle in London.<p>There are two schools of thought to making cycling safer:<p>1) Make cyclists brighter and more armoured.<p>2) dedicated infrastructure.<p>Option 2 is much more costly and harder politically, but is the only school of thought worth taking seriously. Look at places such as as Amsterdam and Copenhagen where cycling is common and safe (1). Do they rely on helmets and glowing things? No they don't. Lots of ordinary people cycle in regular clothes on <i>dedicated separated cycle lanes</i>.<p>Yes, you'll be safer if you stand out by being brighter than everyone else. But new and interesting ways to ramp up the brightness wars are a frivolous distraction from what cyclists in London need. You should <i>not</i> need to "look like cross between Darth Vader and a Christmas Tree" (2) in order to ride a bike.<p>At lot of the current infrastructure is terrible:<p>Advanced stop line? You mean that white mark on the road with a minicab over it.<p>Cycle "superhighway?" You mean that blue stripe underneath the buses and trucks.<p>1) <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/oct/16/copenhagen-cycling-innovation-lycra-louts-green-wave-bike-bridges" rel="nofollow">http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/oct/16/copenhagen-cyc...</a><p>2) <a href="http://lcc.org.uk/articles/cycling-what-not-to-wear-1" rel="nofollow">http://lcc.org.uk/articles/cycling-what-not-to-wear-1</a>
A gun manufacturer handing out protective vests to school kids.<p>Instead of this stunt, maybe they should focus on building cars and particularly trucks that are not unsafe by default. All this talk of <i>blind angle</i> obscures the basic fact that this is first and foremost an engineering problem, and most importantly, you can <i>not</i> turn the defects of your vehicle into the responsibility of other road users.<p>If your vehicle isn't safe, it can not be driven. The solution is certainly not to tell everyone else to just watch out because you can't see shit left and right and man is this thing large and heavy.
> "Cycle safety is the cyclist's responsibility"<p>Woah there. Hold up right there.<p>The safety of <i>ALL</i> road users is on the backs of <i>ALL</i> road users.<p>It's not uncommon in London to see reporting of one of the one-a-month on average deaths of a cyclist to see such comments as "the cyclist was wearing a helmet".<p>Yet the helmet didn't save the cyclist, because the cyclist was crushed by a fully loaded construction HGV tipper truck.<p>This idea that cyclist safety is 100% their responsibility is part of the root cause of the problem.<p>Cyclists are one of the most (if not the most) vulnerable demographics of road users there is, and it should be the responsibility of other road users to help protect them.<p>Failing that, it should be the responsibility of those who provide roads to ensure that the infrastructure itself protects them (segregated cycleways).<p>But creating an idea in which "Cycle safety is the cyclist's responsibility" is plain disgusting when every damn month another cyclist is in a morgue, regardless of whether or not the cyclist wore high visibility clothing, had lights, wore a helmet, etc, etc.<p>And there is my issue with Volvo's "Life paint"... it shifts the blame for the continued stream of fatalities onto the cyclist.<p>Do you want to know where the real problem is? Try this, of the 8 fatalities on London roads this year, 7 were caused by HGV construction vehicles even though such vehicles take up less than 5% of all London vehicular traffic.<p>Here's one from Monday... this week! <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/cyclist-26-killed-in-bank-tipper-truck-crash-was-newly-married-oxford-graduate-10339057.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/cyclist-26-killed-in-b...</a><p>Being covered in reflective spray paint will do nothing against a system that pays HGV drivers by the job count and doesn't enforce the many existing rules about vehicle safety, driver training... and in the recent case where a driver was convicted, the company that hired him didn't even check that he had a valid licence.<p>Perhaps if Volvo really wanted to make a big difference to the safety of cyclists, they'd get heavily behind the proposed designs for safer HGVs for cities: <a href="http://lcc.org.uk/articles/lcc-challenges-construction-industry-to-adopt-its-safer-urban-lorry-to-reduce-lorry-cyclist-deaths" rel="nofollow">http://lcc.org.uk/articles/lcc-challenges-construction-indus...</a>
I stopped cycling in London because I value my life. The city is not built for the amount of cyclists who are already on the roads trying to swerve between the traffic. I have seen people slamming into buses way too many times.<p>A can of fluorescent paint is not going to help much. Most of these accidents happen during the day anyway.
Any evaluation of retroreflective safety features should start with a short overview of what retroreflectivity cannot do: improve visibility, when the object is not within the light cone of the observer's headlights. With that in mind, those impressive side shots are becoming nothing more than show, because any bike sideways in the lights will either be long gone when the car reaches the point where the paths cross, or be already way too close to avoid an accident. And head/tail visibility must be provided by active light anyway, because visibility only inside that headlight beam is never enough. Once you have active light, any retroreflectors are merely adding minor (but important) attitude/dimension/range cues and improvements by "lifepaint" over conventional reflectors will be marginal at most.
The problem is that this will only be used by those bikers who already care about their safety and behave according to traffic rules.<p>The fucktards driving at night in full-black clothing, without lights and reflectors, music blasting in their ears and wearing no helmet on the road, instead of the bike lanes, will not take notice of the spray (or the fact that their behavior is endangering themselves).<p>Now guess which group of bikers gets hit by cars more often?<p>(Disclaimer: I had multiple last-second-saves with said fucktards while peacefully driving around)
Although I love this idea and the execution by Albedo100, I can't help thinking some reflective tape would last longer, and more cost effective in the long term. Also comes in several colours as well.<p>An example is <a href="http://www.amazon.de/Reflective-Stickers-Tapes-Motorcycle-Colors/dp/B00TCOVGIK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1435314538&sr=8-2&keywords=reflective+tape" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.de/Reflective-Stickers-Tapes-Motorcycle-Co...</a>
I wish they make a permanent variant in the future. Another question is how does rain affect the paint.<p>In my cyclist opinion, would like to paint his bike with the permanent variant and perhaps his clothes with temporary one.
This looks like a great product.<p>What's the research say?<p>Cyclists need front and rear lights, and front and rear reflectors. On top of that the most useful reflectors a cyclist can have are on the pedals and on the wrists. These help when a cyclist is turning; and the pedal reflectors clearly show drivers that they're approaching a cyclist.<p>More than that and you risk the "Christmas Tree Effect" - it's tempting to think that more is better, but you risk just confusing the driver who then doesn't take appropriate safety measures.
Cyclists in London are crazy: they swerve in and out of cars, onto the pavements and then back onto the roads. They cross using pedestrian crossings and they cycle through red lights like they don't apply to them.<p>Being able to see them better is great but even if you know exactly where they are you still don't know what they're going to do because they don't follow the same rules of the road.
Looks like a neat idea and could help a bit but not as cool as <a href="http://revolights.com" rel="nofollow">http://revolights.com</a> which has to be my favourite bike visibility system. It's mounted on the wheels, persistence of vision based and knows when to illuminate the LEDs.<p>However, non of these make cycling (especially in London) safe. I wouldn't cycle in London any more as it's just too dangerous, but I did for years. I always wore high vis and a helmet and obeyed the rules of the road and I still had far too many close calls and incidents with other vehicles.<p>If you want to see how tragic just one of very regular London cyclist deaths is then this is on iPlayer for the next week: <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b05y18wv/an-hour-to-save-your-life-series-2-1-between-life-and-death" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b05y18wv/an-hour-to-sav...</a>
<i>"Putting something on that will make you scream out to drivers like me is a fantastic thing."</i><p>If Volvo understood cyclists better, they'd choose a quote like, "I'm a driver and I hate life paint. Who do you think you are looking all flashy and important?" You gotta work with the tribal dynamics, not against them.
Accidents often aren't. When you see the guy weaving though traffic down the highway, changing lanes every few seconds and accelerating and breaking seemingly at random. He will tell you of all the 'accidents' he has had. He's lying. If it's preventable and you choose not to, it's intentional.
You know, Volvo Cars and Albedo accept no liability or responsibility for any individual or individual's accident or injury by any road user or other object whilst wearing Lifepaint. Nor do they accept liability for any damage to property caused directly or indirectly by the paint and what's more, that it is transferable.<p>Furthermore, Volvo say that cycle safety is the cyclist's responsibility. There's more: Lifepaint is one of the many products that can aid visibility but cannot prevent accidents caused by the individual or other road users.