Safe Speed Forums

I would like to see this study that declares hi-biz to be ineffective! I wonder what the circumstances studied were, perhaps a colourful urban environment, since I know first-hand how well hi-viz stands out, even from a busy cockpit, at treetop height and 140 knots, when not being actively looked for! The albedo of the country studied should also be considered, the background in Australia will be very different from that in the UK!

As for people suffering injuries despite wearing helmets, that's like saying that people have broken legs parachuting out of burning aeroplanes, thus parachutes are no good!

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Regulation without education merely creates more criminals.

Stick one /two/three blokes in Hi Viz in a crowd -they stand out . Much more and it becomes camouflage and you don't notice the actions/presence of individuals .Just a thought .

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

I'm not sure what that has to do with the discussion on the asymmetry regarding who should or shouldn't bear a registration plate.

Since you asked, though, there are quite a few who claim that wearing a clearly visible camera improves the behaviour of other road users. I haven't seen any properly conducted objective research to prove this either way, though.


I wasn't aware that anyone was suggesting it was solely an affliction of the motorist. However, it does seem to be primarily motorists who get angry just because they are delayed by a couple of seconds in their race to get to the back of the queue at the next red light.

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"That which is asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without argument.” - Julian Assange

I think you must have been very lucky or you ride in a very quiet, friendly place. The facts that I have are in the hundreds of video clips that are posted on YouTube every week by people like myself.
(Of course it will be easy for someone to find and quote one clip where they believe the cyclist was unreasonable whilst ignoring all the thousands of others.)

What you seem to be saying is that you believe all of the advice in the highly respected literature that is out there as well as the Bikeability national standard, based on hundreds of person years of experience and research is wrong.

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"That which is asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without argument.” - Julian Assange

I have been angry when driving and another road user forces a near miss, though not even close to the level I have reached when cycling and narrowly avoided death or injury. I might curse and even use the horn in a car, but I have walked around the front of a van when it has stopped in a queue and punched dents into the bonnet because it forced me up a grass embankment. The adrenaline can flow much higher on a bike so some of the behaviour of cyclists in the videos is understandable.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

Understandable, maybe, justifiable, certainly not.

Everyone needs to chill a bit on the roads and be more accepting of the errors of others.

And, given the general lawlessness of cyclists, I find the sight of cyclists wearing headcams to detect the transgressions of motorists hypocritical in the extreme. Tu quoque, eh?

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Actually the problem with Hi-Viz is that drivers see Hi-Viz as a sign that the cyclist is more skilled and adept at taking evasive action!

It's like Highway workers - drivers often think that they should be used to vehicles passing close by, and therefore give them less room than they would a granny stood in the same position.

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

I've always thought that highway workers consider Hi Viz as an invincibility suite ,or could it be the camouflage effect .But then I've never seen what I consider a safe system of work set up on any small road works -I'd not work using a windy drill without a touch lookout I could trust .

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

Weren't you aware? You just did it again!

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Regulation without education merely creates more criminals.

I've lived (commuted) in Portsmouth and London, so that must make me phenomenally lucky!


Yet I have never felt any compulsion to record or report. What are we doing so differently? Where does our experience differ?


Not at all. There is a great deal of difference between reasonable and unnecessary.

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

No I didn't. You just made that up. Read what I actually wrote. I have never seen a cyclist get angry because they were delayed a few seconds, but I have seen many motorists get angry for that reason. I have seen cyclists (and pedestrians) get angry for other reasons, though usually more serious issues.

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"That which is asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without argument.” - Julian Assange

Reasonable means until the cyclist feels it is safe to let people pass. There can be no other sensible definition.

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"That which is asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without argument.” - Julian Assange

There you go again. I imagine you have never met or even seen Toltec, and yet you feel it is OK to accuse him of being a lawless hypocrite. Does that mean that, by virtue of the fact you drive a car, you must be a drunk driving, mobile phone using, red light jumping hypocritical car driver. Do you consider that to be a fair inference for me to make?

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"That which is asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without argument.” - Julian Assange

By definition, the PP leaves the driver less leeway to pass widely.

As I said above, a certain kind of driver might not be inclined to give a cyclist in the PP as much room anyway.

AND talk/attitude like that like that is what I allude to as wedge driving between groups of road users .

The yob element of both groups are blinding both groups to the failings of both groups .
And then there's the idiot pedestrian.

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

Could that not be because they don't get delayed, what with the availability of pavements, filtering, short cuts and jumping red lights etc.

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

I agree with the principle of what you are saying, but the wedge is driven by people who lump large numbers of other people into a category and then accuse all members of that category of having the failings of a few of them. This is precisely the point I was making. It would be no more correct of me to make those assertions about the driving behaviour of PeterE, whom I have never met, than it is for him to make assertions about the behaviours of individual camera wearing cyclists, whom he has never met. As I said before this is about good road users versus bad road users.

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"That which is asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without argument.” - Julian Assange

OT but it just occurred to me that I'm very glad that some kind of primary position for drivers hadn't become roadcraft doctrine at some point. i.e. the car in front of you was doing the right thing by driving in the middle of the road until he thought it safe for you to overtake him.

Cripes, that'd be awful. The car in front doesn't always know what the car behind is capable of.

So you think it is reasonable for road users to obstruct others based on their perception of what it is safe for others to do?

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Regulation without education merely creates more criminals.

I think it is reasonable for someone to expect to be able to follow the advice given to them in the National Standard without being harassed or threatened by some impatient thug who thinks getting to the back of a queue 3, 4 or 5 seconds earlier is more important than safety. This is the problem we have to deal with every single day. I also am a car driver with around 350,000 miles of driving experience and I can't remember ever being held up by a cyclist for more than about 10 seconds.

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"That which is asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without argument.” - Julian Assange