Readytoride
Well-Known Member
- Region
- USA
- City
- Virginia
I know this is a bit off subject, but....was talking to a neighbor (in her 70s) the other day that said she'd waved hello out her car window when she saw me riding my ebike down the road, and did I see her. (I wave to everyone, anyway, long before they reach me and as they pass me and always get a friendly wave back. Rural roads, nice folks.) So I said I did (didn't really but wanted to be polite) and, out of curiosity, I asked how well she'd seen me, intentionally wanting to gloat over my brand new super bright pink flashers on my bike.Thanks for all the good wishes everyone.
What I don't get is that I had one of the very brightest flashing red lights Cygolite Hotshot Pro 200 on the back of my helmet at the time. It's impossible to miss seeing, plus I had the bike's red tail light also. How can someone drive up from behind and not see that? Anyway, she cut right in front of me to get into a gas station and claimed she didn't see me. And that she's been driving for 30 years and had never had an accident. SIGH
The gash on my leg is pretty bad... skin split open right to the shin bone, but the cracked rib made it almost impossible to sleep. No matter how I moved I had a lot of pain.
And I really wanted to try my new seat post!![]()
"Your shirt", she said.
My shirt? Well, yeah I tend to wear bright sherbert colors of brilliant orange and Barbie doll pink and clear sky blue and mint greens, very easy to spot. But still...what about my plethora of neat blinkies? Two pinks and one red - all festooning the rear of my bike, PLUS a solid red built in BIG tail light fed by the bike battery. Did she even notice them?
"No," she said, "I only saw your shirt." "So...didn't you see the lights at all?" "No, I didn't see the lights."
Now, I'm a small lightweight person so there's not a lot of real estate that shirt has to cover, meaning it's not a broad billboard of neon warning to motorists that there's a "cyclist ahead" as I'm heading down the road. Just a small spot of color different than the surrounding landscape.
I then asked a few others that see me on the road pretty much everyday. Same answer. They see the shirt before anything else. Only one person mentioned the blinkies, and those were the pink ones they saw.
I'll probably go back to Wal-Mart and get a few more of those cheap neon polyester stretchy t-shirts if those are what make me the most visible.