- Conspicuity means more than just making yourself seen—it means making yourself easy to recognize. Placing a strobe on your helmet will make you visible at night, but it certainly doesn’t make you recognizable. Seeing the two headlights of an oncoming truck doesn’t help if you think it is two motorcycles and try to go between them. Even if you could make yourself look the size of a tractor trailer truck, it wouldn’t be enough. Several studies have proven that reflective markings make even trailers safer.
- To be conspicuous, an object must be recognized without confusion or ambiguity. Every second counts in avoiding a crash. A few tenths of a second spent deciding the meaning of what is seen can mean the difference between a close call and a hospital call.
- Drivers go through four stages in responding to an object they see:
- They detect it.
- They identify it.
- They make a decision to react.
- They act.
Good conspicuity acts to shorten the reaction time in the first three stages. |