Momentary Blindness Towards Grey Cars On Grey Days (insurance, vehicle, motorcycle)
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This might sound like an odd question, but has anyone else ever momentarily not noticed a moving grey car on a grey day for even a split second? This just happened to me about an hour ago, causing me to almost turn out directly in front of it, and after the near-miss had occurred, I had an epiphany of sorts...a two-pronged epiphany: 1.) This was not the first time this had happened to me, as a driver, and 2.) Given that *I myself* drive a grey car and have had a few seemingly inexplicable near-misses where I'd have been at no fault whatsoever (in other words, where drivers cut out in front of me as if my car wasn't even there), I wonder if my Corolla's color was at all a factor in any of those events. Many years ago I read about 'inattentional blindness' being a factor in some motorcycle crashes--people aren't accustomed to looking out for bikes; ergo, they sometimes fail to notice them, with potentially tragic consequences. I wonder if grey cars pose an ever-so-slightly elevated safety threat, especially in regions like mine that are prone to many camouflage-providing grey days. So yeah, has anyone else out in City-Data land ever thought of this possibility or experienced a close call due to a briefly unnoticed grey car?
(One difference between my car and the one I failed to see today was that mine has daytime running lights whereas this one did not...not to mention that this other driver should've had their lights on anyway given the relative darkness....)
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Yes, car color definitely affects visibility to other drivers. Here, with more gray days, it's not as much of an issue because we have contrast with the green foliage/woods. A bigger problem is on the rare snow day, when the white vehicles blend in. Fortunately there are not as many white cars, with silver and gray being far more popular now. With the nasty fog that we had this morning, pretty much any color was hard to see.
Found this...interesting but somewhat inconclusive beyond the finding that black cars are most dangerous and yellow are safest. Author sounds British, and his mentioning of white in the safest category leads me to wonder about regional variation there (as the camo effect in a snow-prone area like mine would seemingly scale white cars further down the rankings)
Yes, car color definitely affects visibility to other drivers. Here, with more gray days, it's not as much of an issue because we have contrast with the green foliage/woods. A bigger problem is on the rare snow day, when the white vehicles blend in. Fortunately there are not as many white cars, with silver and gray being far more popular now. With the nasty fog that we had this morning, pretty much any color was hard to see.
Hah, you beat me to the snow mention by one minute (see comment #3). What's interesting is that my near-miss today was on a heavily wooded road, but the one part I was focused on as I went to make my turn would've been foliage-free (the foreground, basically), so there was little contrast between the charcoal grey car I did not see and the road/sky/everything I seemed to be looking at. But, to the extent that trees were in my peripheral vision, even they at this point are all bark, no leaves (not so many evergreens in these parts as in Seattle); ergo, more shades of grey.
Yes, I experience this particularly right before dark, when the natural light is dimming. Darker vehicles blend with the highway color and it is harder to detect the movement. I drive highways to and from work and I can't understand why people who run up and down the highway daily don't have daytime running lights on. If a vehicle color is darker, it makes them very, very difficult to see. I drive a white vehicle with daytime driving lights and it is my belief that this is the most visible a vehicle can be and I almost never have people pull out in front of me.
It is also very difficult to see motorcycles even if they have a single daytime driving light. Recently, more and more of them have lower flickering running lights that are on a longer bar and not a single lamp. This is a huge improvement in visibility of motorcycles.
In my 'ol country this was called chicken blindness. Bad vision at dusk. Also, as I went through that period for a few years, it is sign of cataracts. Got mine done - et voila. All good.
It's a Japanese conspiracy to start us on cars that are the color of the road, tar, and mud...and now we want them.
I am alive today because in 1990 when I first got a dark gray Honda Accord someone warned me,
"Be the first at dusk to turn on your headlights....no one sees you."
I also put red and white reflective tape on my car at the time...people thought is was weird...I
would say, "But you noticed my car didn't you?" !
I'll tape orange balloons on it to be seen.
Aren't "Auto-lights" a feature on most every car? I own a Black vehicle but my running lights are on at all times and my headlights come on automatically when it is dark enough or starts raining.
Last extended trip I was on involved a lot of heavy rain and it was disturbing to see how many drivers didn't turn on their lights.
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