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Across England and Wales, only 11.06% of vehicle crimes, ie police-recorded crimes where the offender has taken, stolen from or tampered with a vehicle, are ever solved! That is, in only 11.06% of incidents has an offender either been charged or received another punishment (like a fine or caution). That means that, in 88.94% of cases, the offenders doesn't give a stuff for the penalty they may face because they simply won't be caught!
It's also worth remembering this is the average figure. If you're unlucky enough to live in the Warwickshire, Dorset, London or West Mercia police force areas, then the chances of somebody being caught for nicking your pride and joy is less than 6%! Personally, I am sick of politicians telling us how they are going to be hard on crime, and hard on the causes of crime while at the same time cutting the police forces' budgets. How can you be hard on crime if you don't catch the criminals?
So, next time MAG is in a position to discuss crime with one of our representatives, will you ask, what they are going to do to ensure criminals are caught and convicted? Izzy Lane
High Viz
In issue 37 you carried an article about claims that laboratory tests support the idea that high viz clothing works but ignores the fact that many road users simply aren’t looking properly!
The report concludes that road users will pull into the path of an on-coming motorcycle more often than not even when the rider is covered in high viz kit.
MAG should thank Professor Geoffrey Underwood for providing the evidence on behalf of the EU to what we’ve instinctively known since time began.
Road safety is about all road users thinking about their actions and making better choices. Dressing riders up in high viz, insisting on headlights in daytime for all vehicles, fiddling with speed limits, prohibiting vehicle modifications or even changing the driving test won’t ever achieve this. Road skills, like any other, requires development over a lifetime.
Ben Graham
Dayglo sparks I was reading in the road issue 38 about the Eire government being adamant on dayglo. This feels like an issue I can really get my teeth into. Sparks will fly. Kev Hague
Hi Viz, The facts and the fiction. It used to be my habit to wear Hi-Viz clothing on the bike, but I changed my mind. Recent findings have supported my decision to change. Nottingham University devised an
24 The ROAD
experiment which shows that Hi-Viz clothing makes riders more visible! Duh. That’s why it's called Hi-Viz. Did you need to do the experiment?
They also seem to have shown that over half of drivers would pull out on a biker who is wearing Hi-Viz. Lots of comfort there then.
Of course the experiment relies on observers actually looking. Real life may be a little different - now for the facts. The government's accident statistics show that in 40% of accidents reported to the police a causal factor was, ‘failed to look properly.’ This was the most frequently recorded cause. In the UK at least there are no statistics connecting Hi-Viz clothing and road accidents. The reason is simple. Nobody collects the data. The accident statistics are compiled mainly from a document called STATS 19 which is filled out by police officers attending an accident. On this document there is no question about the clothing worn by motorcyclists.
Sensible riders will adopt a defensive riding style based on the assumption that about half of drivers will not see them. This seems to work pretty well. As a consequence of course one must realise that the colour of your clothes makes no difference at all to your safety. The people who see you might react sensibly or they might not. The people who don't look won't see you. John Osborn.
Hi-Viz high-reflective?
I have read with interest the various letters and articles about the compulsory wearing of Hi-Viz clothing. High Visibility clothing is a bit of a misnomer. Objects are either visible, or they’re not. If enough photons are reflected from the object and reach the eye, then the object is visible. Although an object might be visible to an observer, there is no way of knowing whether an observer will actually perceive the object to be what it is. Camouflage takes good advantage of this. There is no scale of visibility that runs from high to low with regard to objects, but there is a scale which describes the medium through which you see those objects. Thick fog would be low on the visibility scale, whilst clear mountain air would be at the other end of the scale.
When people talk of High visibility clothing, what they are actually describing is high reflectivity clothing.
These items are made using fluorescent dyes which not only reflect light from the visible part of the spectrum, but convert light from the ultra violet part of the spectrum and reflect that at visible wavelengths. Fluorescence was first discovered by Sir
George Stokes in 1852, but it was not until the 1930’s that the Switzer brothers invented fluorescent dyes. They called the fluorescent
colours that they created, DayGlo. This simple use of the words High
Visibility when in fact the term used should be High Reflectivity, is probably at the root of all our problems. Proponents of the wearing of such garments have been fooled into thinking that a particular garment has a property that it does not actually possess. As far as it is possible to tell, nobody has ever done a scientific study of which is brighter to an observer, a motorcycle headlight or a high visibility jacket. If the results show that the jacket beats the headlight, then there is no point in having the headlight as it will just detract from the perceived brightness of the jacket. If on the other hand, the headlight is brighter than the jacket, then there is no point in having the jacket, for the same reason. Luckily, a study of this type is dead easy to do as there are a number of suitable instruments that could make the measurements.
Should we press for such a study? After all, nobody has anything to lose and everybody has much to gain from finding out the facts. It must also be a good idea to encourage the use of the term high reflectivity rather than high visibility in all correspondence between MAG and the various Government agencies. Duncan MacKillop
Black jacket, black helmet, black trousers, black boots, black gloves – still alive.
Hi-Viz
There is a filter in our brains which selects what it thinks we’re interested in from the huge range of data our five senses receive. It presents this information to our conscious mind, and discards the rest. This is a necessary function because our five senses can actually acquire far more data per second than our conscious mind can process, so the majority of it MUST be discarded. Unwittingly, we maintain and adjust the programming of this filter according to that which we have consciously decided is important or interesting to us and that which is not.
As an example of this filter working, imagine your wife takes an interest in a particular car, say a Mazda MX5 – suddenly
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