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Mist and Fog?
Quick one.
During daylight in heavy mist and fog, should I wear my Respro reversible ankle bands with the colourful fluorescent yellow/green side out or the 3M reflective side showing?
Which would be the more noticeable to you, the more aware cyclist drivers?
If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.
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32 comments
In fog, wouldn't dark colours contrast better than light coloured fluorescents?
In any case, I'd always use strong lights front and rear for what it's worth.
The Forum is not dead.
I think that in mist I will go for the flouresent and then go for the 3M retroreflective in the heavy fog.
Some fluro visible. 3M picks up light and throws it directly back to it's source. If their lights aren't on you (eg when tehy are emerging from a side road so looking at at 90o to the direction of their lights) it's just grey. So a mix of viz and 3M is best, as well as being lit up like a xmas tree
As a point of interest (starts to fill his pipe a whilst preparing to tell his oh so intersting story) I have a grey 3M camo style jacket I picked up from Evans.
Was wearing it a couple of weeks ago after dark, with a hi-viz rucksack cover, 4 flashing reds on my back (one on my lid, 2 on the rucksack, 1 on the bike) a flashing white on the front of my lid and a billion candle power torch on my bars when I got reprimanded for my grey jacket by a driver at some traffic lights.
Simple Rule:-
Drivers decide what you SHOULD have been wearing AFTER the collision
"If only he had been wearing a hi-viz jacket M'Lud"
not forgetting - i couldn't see him, his hi vis blended in with the low sun
Not to mention - "Where were his pedal reflectors, eh? 'Bout time cyclists had to obey the law like motorists do!"
Jeez ain't that the truth!
It would be interesting to know the colour of the car.
Black and dark coloured cars have significantly more "accidents" than light cars.
It could be a case of the pot calling the kettle black
The problem is that I never think of the right put down in a confrontation situation
I didn't see it cos it wasn't wearing hi viz....
re put downs, I know I'm the same, but in this case my laughter expressed a thousand words I think.
How much do you spend on batteries? Or time spent charging all those lights?
Not much. The headlight is USB you get about 2h on full beam, 4 on half, (which is ample light for road riding). I personally don't spend any time charging it, not counting the plugging it in
. The others various; Knog frog knockoffs from halfords on the lid, a cheap pendant and a Wilko flasher on the ruck sack, a topeak blinker on the bike - they're all CR2032s except for the Wilk blinker which is AAA. Can't remember when I last changed the batteries - they last well and multipack batteries from £ shop cost, well, £ a pack
A difficut call - it depends upon how bad the fog is.
Good front and rear lights pointing towards drivers come first on my list. Don't worry about dazzling drivers, you probably won't manage it.
Reflectives (correctly called retro-reflectives) reflect light back in the direction it came from, ie back towards the vehicle's lights. In thick fog a proportion of the light (say 50%) emitted from a cars lights is absorbed by the fog before it hits your reflectors, then the same proportion is absorbed when it is reflected back to the driver. Your reflectors may then be only 25% efficient. Don't trust your life to reflectors in thick fog.
Hi viz (fluorescent) colours need ambient light which contains the wavelwngths that cause the fluorescence effect to be present. Hi-viz yellow needs Ultra violet - blue light to work well, this may not be present in thick fog. Hi Viz orange uses longer wavelength light in the visible part of the spectrum and may be a better bet. Don't trust your life to H Viz in thick fog.
My view is in fog, use a lot of everything and hope for the best. Also this is probably one of the few times when it is a good idea to ride in the gutter.
First and foremost, a decent set of lights! In my experience, good lights are more visible than any amount of fluorecscent or reflective clothing/accessories, especially in fog.
Assuming you have that base covered, I would lean towards reflective side out. In foggy conditions, most drivers will be using some form of lights and when caught in headlights I find reflectives stand out far more than fluorescents. The only risk is that if any drivers are not using lights, then the reflectives will achieve precisely nothing, where as a fluorescent might have achieved something.
Reflective for would be my shout, allied to some relatively bright clothing choice colours. One good thing about newer* cars is many of them have auto headlights and daytime running lights, so this give a bit more chance of the reflective standing out. Personally I think a bright coloured jersey is far more effective than Fluro anklebands as there's more 'real estate' to catch peoples attention.
As an aside, I was quite suprised driving the otherday, even in moderately murky light, just how well the Deliveroo riders green/reflective jackets showed up. as opposed to someone wearing a slightly grubby yellow PPE vest, and this was in daylight.
*I live in an odd city where the age of a persons car seem directly linked to their sense of self worth, and so you rarely find one more than 10 years old. I appreciate this might not work everywhere!
They seem to be using a variation of the proviz 360 jacket.
Yep, but the green broke up the silver, which otherwise would blend in with the grey when not reflective. Probably why Proviz introduced coloured versions. I have one of their softshells which I used to commute in the dark, rest was black tho, so not much use in fog!
Fluo side out. You do have pedal reflectors, don't you?
Of course, but the 3M will always be more reflective.
And lots of other bright and reflective cloting. Lots of lights too, and more than legally required bike reflectors.
You see, I didn't see any other cyclists when on the road, so my lights didn't light up anyone elses reflectives, or get to compare it with bright colours.
I was just going on the principle of not having all your eggs in one basket.
Pedal reflectors are highly effective in a headlight beam (especially if you are actually pedalling, due to the eye-catching reciprocating motion), but there does need to be a headlight beam.
Fluorescent materials need UV (daylight) to do anything special, and will not fluoresce under car headlamps. So in fog their effectiveness is only as a function of whatever UV percolates through in the watery daylight.
So I'd go belt and braces in the fog.
Given the vast majority would have lights, I would go for the reflective side.
Or better find an off road route !
I can still recall almost being mown down on christmas day by a silver car with no lights in fog with the driver deciding it was a good idea to overtake another vehicle. I also had 2 rather bright front lights switched on.
The vast majority will have lights, but will any of them be turned on and will all of them be working?
It was pretty foggy on on Thursday, but many drivers didn't have any lights on - although... when I got to work and cleared the mist off my specs, it turned out it was a lot less foggy than I thought.
Anyway, the answer to Ktache's question is ofcourse... by an extra pair and wear flourescent and one reflective.
I think it depends if the driver is smart enough to switch their lights on when driving in fog.
Some I past today, whilst riding in the fog, weren't.
Given how much moaning there was on our works forum about people having fog lights on when it wasn't foggy enough, I think it's a badge of honour for some drivers to not put their lights on!
If the fog's that bad, I would only rely on very bright lights being an effective safety measure (> 75 lumens).
For the ankle bands, I'd just stick with reflective in the dark and fluro when it's light.
I had put it down to incompetence, utter disregard to theirs or others safety or remembering that when they turned their lights on for the fog that one time, they left them on while at work and couldn't start the car when it was going home time.
It's definately that too; the ones moaning about being dazzled by fog lights 'cause it's not foggy enough are also the ones tanking along with no lights on 'cause it's not *that* foggy - until suddenly it is that foggy and they're going too fast.
It's only rear fog lights that dazzle - they work by being very bright in order to be visible to drivers behind through dense fog. If you can adequately see the tail lamps of cars ahead then clearly you don't need your rear fogs on, although this simple logic eludes many.
Front fog lights work by being low down rather than extra bright. By being low down they avoid blinding the driver with light reflected back by the fog (the water droplets comprising the fog act not unlike the glass beads of a retroreflector, just try using your main beam in dense fog). So they are not really a problem if they are used sans-fog.
Except when drivers use them in the rain, then it can be dazzling. It is also dazzling when the road is bumpy and where the fog light is not seated correctly in the lamp (although how anyone manages this is beyond me.)
Well I once got pulled by the police for driving around with front fogs on at dusk on a clear day, I was an unwise teenager using them for their proper intended purpose; to display to all that you are not driving the poverty spec. model
- oops.
The sun was very low and behind me, so I explained to the officer, would make me more visible. Offered advice and sent on my way.
Also guilty, in teenage years, of using front fogs (or 'driving lights', as I seem to recall they were also known) not in the fog. But at least I knew how to turn off the rear one - I'm amazed how many people I see searing the retinas of following drivers in perfectly clear conditions.
There is also a bunch of drivers who drive around long after dark oblivious to having no rear lights on - due to the incomprehensible EU decision to make DLRs front-only.
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