Facepalm
From Australia. Here’s the ironic caption for the photo on the right:
Cr Tim Laurence negotiates cross traffic on St George’s Rd in his high-visibility vest, which he says should be mandatory for all cyclists. Picture: ADAM ELWOOD.
Here’s the article:
Council wants all cyclists to wear high-visibility clothing
Australia has a mandatory helmet law already.
Of course the article ends with the obligatory safety-in-numbers justification for more funding for infrastructure. Like the sight-line-challenged infrastructure in the photo?
If your safety vest is bright enough, motorists will be able to see it with the vestigial eyes in the backs of their heads and be able to see you through solid objects, such as large box trucks.
Garry Brennan has uncommon common sense. An Aussie John Schubert? Grumpy is smiling…
It only makes sense if pedestrians are also forced to do the same.
It would make more sense if motorists weren’t continually running their cars into large brightly-painted objects like fire trucks and ambulances…
Any similar proposal for drivers of gray cars? They’re practically invisible at dawn and dusk and in the rain.
Reminds me of the time I was pulled over by the highway patrol in Oregon in 1987. Some drivers had expressed concern that I was out there on a “dangerous” two-lane highway. A trucker had used his CB to report me. I told the officer, “Well, he saw me from a half-mile away. I know because I heard his horn and looked back, and he had just come around a bend that far back.”
They have to make themselves believe that we’re “hard to see” so they can try to justify making cycling look dangerous and controlling us.
From Wikipedia:
The Locomotive Act 1865 (Red Flag Act)
The Locomotive Act 1865 (Red Flag Act):[5]
Set speed limits of 4 mph (6 km/h) in the country and 2 mph (3 km/h) in towns.
Stipulated that self-propelled vehicles should be accompanied by a crew of three: the driver, a stoker and a man with a red flag walking 60 yards (55 m) ahead of each vehicle. The man with a red flag or lantern enforced a walking pace, and warned horse riders and horse drawn traffic of the approach of a self propelled machine.
Sometimes it’s progress to take a step back into history and re-enact some laws!
Re: The Locomotive Act
Unsignaled grade crossings (no crossing gates, not flashing signals) still function with this rule.
And it makes sense. Given a hidden often perpendicular and scarcely visible crossing and a self-propelled vehicle incapable of stopping within a short distance, even if going slowly.
Now, mandatory day-glo could become a fashion statement!
And why are the reports of drivers irritated at the presence of cyclists in the roadway considered evidence of danger, even if they are wearing brightly colored clothes?
As you probably know already, drivers were concerned about this child: http://bikewalktn.blogspot.com/2011/08/elizabethton.html
“Locomotive” here referred to an automobile, not a train.