Even in brightly colored gear on a bright colored bike and with loud as hell race pipes I've still had too many close calls. Hi vis will make no difference to anything. Reflective stripes or whatever on your jacket will certainly make us more visible at night however during the day won't do squat. Unfortunately educating the other road users is to hard and to costly. Mandatory rules are the beginning of the end.....

Hopefully with the New Budget, the Federal Government will get rid of some of these Regulating Pricks, EPA for a start.

Is being more visible better? The common sense and intuitive answer is yes. But the counter-intuitive answer is no. Which answer, intuitive or counter-intuitive, is better supported by studies in experimental psychology and perceptual awareness? Strangely, the counter-intuitive one.

For instance, accidents involving bicycles and pedestrians declines as the number of bicycles and pedestrians increases in urban and city areas. The key is the expectancy effect. Drivers expect to see them and thus see them more. 

When we do not expect to see something we are more likely not to see it. Of course the intuitive guess is that we will see the unexpected because it's surprising nature stands out to us. But google something like "the invisible gorilla" and watch the video, or go to Chabris and Simons' web-blog and see their run through of countless experiments confirming expectancy effects and inattentional blindness. When we do not expect something we are more likely not to see it.

Now just apply the counter-intuitive thinking, which is well supported by experiments on perception, to high visibility vests. Who expects to see some biker, already a low expectancy effect because cars so vastly outnumber bikes on the road, wearing Fluoro green or yellow or whatever? Barely anyone.

So there is actually an argument, backed by statistics and experiments, that casts serious doubt on the claim that high visibility vests will get you noticed. Indeed, they might get you into an accident, increasing your degree of unexpectedness for other motorists.

One caveat. Those in the thread noting that high visibility vests or running lights get you noticed more in rural areas or at night are right. But in this case, it is the distance relation for vests (seen from afar, but not necessarily closer in) and the high expectancy effects for lights (it's night, look for lights) doing the safety work.

I understand the above is full of counter-intuitive ideas, but they're not mine. I'm just relaying some interesting stuff you can glean from books like Chabris and Simons, The Invisible Gorilla, and from general work on inattentional blindness and expectancy effects in experimental psychology. For now I am sticking with my normal leather jacket, not because hi vis vests are uncool or the governments idea etc, but because my reading of some relevant science suggests they might make my visibility less not more.

Chinashop bull, the only problem with your argument is that you don't have one. Applying a label to something you don't like is not the same as supplying a counter-argument. Where's your vaunted rigor there?!

Besides, if you don't know the difference between experimental psychology and psychology I doubt you have the faintest idea whether the tests done on inattentional blindness, change blindness and expectancy effects are informative or not. Maybe you should try reading that literature first?

Regardless, there is an important issue that could get lost here. Will hi-vis vests improve safety? Few can argue with increased safety and if I thought relevant experiments supported hi-vis vests improving safety I would not argue against the move, at least on safety grounds (I can imagine other trade-off arguments of course). But if some relevant experiments don't support the move, the question we have to ask is whether the legislation is just nodding toward safety without actually trying to support safety. Hi-vis vests become a technological fix that pastes over the real work one might need to do to improve safety. For instance, why not legislation that provides for greater punishment for careless driving? Why not legislation that supports more bikes on the road, a move that would decrease the low-expectancy effects we see manifested in all those motorists saying "I did not (expect to) see the bike"? Why not more money going to lanes in city traffic for bikes? Or how about re-tasking legislation from meaningless punitive measures against motorbike riders because their exhaust pipes make noise, to measures designed to educate car drivers about the greater blind spots involved with motorbikes?

But no, let's legislate for hi-vis vests. In doing so we may actually be witness to a misunderstanding about motorcycle safety, as if it is a problem of low visibility and thus amenable to technological fix solutions we make the responsibility of the potential victims (riders) not the perpetrators of harm (careless car drivers). But a hint that low visibility is a consequence not a cause in this discussion is the low incidences of car driving motorcyclists crashing into motorcyclists. Quite likely because we expect motorcycles to be sharing our roads and we are more diligent about shoulder checking and we show more awareness of the larger blind spot zones where bikes are concerned.

Anyone still reading, my point is that you can poo poo what experimental psychology has to say about expectancy effects and thus hi-vis vests if you want. Personally I think the research is very informative in offering a cautionary tale about advertised safety benefits of hi-vis vests. But the larger issue is, I think, that hi-vis vests are a technical fix that avoids the real problem while making it look like Government is trying to help.

Are you saying riders are to blame when a car merges straight into them, or turns right in front of them? Good luck with that argument.

As for studies "invariably" finding the rider to be at fault, that's an over-statement but also an obfuscation. It seems you're pushing toward presupposing low visibility as cause by converting car drivers' claims of "I did not see the bike" into a rider-at-fault issue because it's their responsibility to somehow make themselves magically visible to a driver not looking in the first place. That's the only hidden assumption that would allow you to convert the statistics showing accidents involving motorcycles to be either car driver "not seeing bike", or biker just losing it, into "invariably" biker is to blame. Yes, bikers can be at fault and the statistics reflect that fact. But most accidents are either single vehicle accidents where the biker lost it or car-bike accidents, the vast majority of which involve charges against the driver.

Single vehicle accidents of biker error are irrelevant to this issue. Sticking a hi-vis vest on a biker won't make them error free.

The only relevant stat is multi-vehicle accidents, and in those, car driver error is the majority cause, reflected in the distribution of criminal charges.

What's the obfuscation, though? It's the diversion to the stats, pure and simple. The stats are important, no doubt. They point away from biker error as major cause of car-bike crashes, but set that aside for the moment. I still say that hi-vis vests are a technical fix that allows safety agencies to pretend they are dealing with car-bike and bike-alone safety issues, by converting safety into solely an issue for the rider. The rider is blamed for not making themselves visible enough. Car drivers are not rebuked for not paying attention.

When will bikers start pushing back against legislation that criminalizes their hobby (guilt by association, too noisy, etc) or pretends it is their fault for getting crashed into by cars? What's next?
"Dear officer, I was riding along and the car driver just veered right into my lane and slammed into me".
"Well, dirty biker, you should have had your flouro green vest on".
"Dear officer, but that car driver should respect lanes and only change when clear".
"Dear dirty biker, as I said, it makes no difference the degree of car driver care, all that matters is the technology to keep you safe was not something you availed yourself of, so that excuses all manner of car driver inattention".

THIS is why hi-vis vests as some kind of safety panacea could do with a nip in the bud. Safety on the road requires good driving and riding skills by all, not just colors.