I'm not so sure that having drivers more used to cyclists is all that helpful. I grew up in Boston and spent much of my adult life in the suburbs west of Boston; 1974 to 2002. Since then I've lived in a small town in south/central New Hampshire. It's very hilly around here so most of the natives have no interest in cycling. On a typical 30 mile ride on a weekend, I might see two or three other cyclists. But the drivers are wonderful here. On our narrow winding roads they happily wait until it's safe to pass and it's extremely rare for someone to pass within three feet of me.
Occasionally I go south to ride with friends west of Boston. There are cyclists everywhere. And the drivers barely notice us. They think nothing of passing with only a foot of clearance at 40mph! So I think that there's some other factor involved. PJW On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 12:04 PM Benz Ouyang, Sunnyvale, CA < [email protected]> wrote: > With respect to visibility and lighting, I read somewhere that overall > visibility is correlated with the size of the light, rather than its > intensity. This made sense to me because lights don't have infinite energy > supplies, so your 1 watt of LED light energy can be concentrated into one > small cone (beam?) of retina-searing capability, or diffused into a > wide-angle slab that has a higher chance of being noticed by those who are > not exactly in the cone of blindness. In fact, all motorized vehicles > appear to have the diffused type of light, even if some can be diffused > *and* bright. > > The usual light marketing copies often remind me of way back, when > computers were marketed solely on their clock speed instead of actual > ability to function in a useful manner. We see lumen being bandied about > all the time to sell lights, but that is a fairly useless metric because > having a lot of light doesn't mean that light is being put to good use; > what's useful is lux at a specific distance (let's say 10m), like with > StVZO standards. > > But all of these are passive devices. What we really need are more active > mechanisms, like higher driver proficiency and awareness. I've read > somewhere that the #1 safety factor for cyclists (as far as bicycle-car > interaction) is drivers actually looking for cyclists. Andy Cheatham kind > of eluded to this with the discussion of "vast image with lots of > complexity that can be data overload". I often bring in the example > <https://youtu.be/vJG698U2Mvo> where one will not register something that > the brain is not primed to look for, even if one technically sees it. To > address this will require more cyclist presence on the road to acclimate > drivers, and that won't happen unless drivers are acclimated and thus > present less of an apparent risk to cyclist. So Catch-22. > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "RBW Owners Bunch" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/3d489bff-9abb-45fc-837a-4fa9f168ba71n%40googlegroups.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/3d489bff-9abb-45fc-837a-4fa9f168ba71n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- Peter White -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/CA%2BD%3DXm_pOkMkb6%2B4Hui3F%2BXuM-yoPtXzFvu3%2B-%2BVK9sPf1mjLw%40mail.gmail.com.
