[andy james]

why do the majority of road cyclists wear black or other dark-coloured clothing?

Motorists are more likely to hit them, or pedestrians step in front of them!

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[andy james]

Be practical. Its the cyclist

Be practical. Its the cyclist who gets killed or injured regardless of who you consider to be at fault. Shouldn’t they at least try to reduce the risk?

Most (non-sporting) road cyclists do NOT have reflectors on their clothing.

[hawkinspeter]

Why are so many cars black or

Why are so many cars black or dark-coloured? You’d’ve thought that insurance would vary for different coloured vehicles, but the statistics do not back that up.

To be honest, if a motorist has trouble seeing a cyclist that’s wearing dark colours, then they need to stop driving until they can get their eyes checked (and do not drive to Barnard’s Castle).

With pedestrians, it’s nothing to do with colour perception and everything to do with them not looking at all.

I would suggest that we need to examine why some motorists/pedestrians don’t pay enough attention to their immediate surroundings rather than trying to shift blame onto the choice of clothing. For what it’s worth, most black cycling clothing also has highly reflective elements which is more than can be said for black-coloured cars.

Black clothing does have the advantage of disguising sweat/dirt etc so there can be pragmatic reasons to choose black. That’s why shorts are often black but tops are more brightly coloured.

[Author]

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