Ceri JC

The problem is, there has never been (and is unlikely to ever be) any truly telling research about how much exactly hi-vis improves your odds.

People who are prepared to spend the money getting one and time putting on a hivis jacket, (as well as enduring the questionable aesthetics of it) are likely to make concessions to safety in other aspects of their riding. They are more likely to have a "sensible" bike (I've yet to see a blown 'Busa with the rider in a fluoro jacket...), engage in advanced rider training and generally take fewer risks. Someone who habitually rides like a **** and filters through near stationary traffic at a ton is unlikely to wear high vis. In this respect, it's more symptomatic of a rider's standard/style, rather than the direct cause/prevention of accidents.

The only test I can think of, would be very expensive to properly implement and is as follows:

1. Take a large group (at least 2000) of "dangerous" riders: people on sportsbikes and streetfighters. Weekend warriors, who have a large number of convictions for very high speeding offenses, dangerous driving, have all crashed several times and who normally spit at people who wear high vis.

2. Take an equally large group of "safe riders": IAM senior observers, ROSPA gold standard riders and police class 1 motorcyclists who all ride tourers or cruisers. All of whom ride all year round, have never had an accident they could have avoided, all wear high vis and white lids as a matter of course.

3. Split both groups in half, combine half of each group with a half from the opposite lot.

4. Allocate one of these groups high vis, and the other lot none.

5. Send them back out onto the roads, the one lot only being allowed to wear white lids and forced to wear high vis jackets every time they ride, the other lot having to wear only black leathers and lids, with no reflective strips at all.

6. 12 months on, compare accident stats for the year for both groups.

My hypothesis is that the difference between the high and low vis groups would be very close and certainly not 37% different.

It would be key to the integrity of the study that people:

a) Stuck to wearing high vis, every time they ride, had they been told to do so and visa versa. To this end, you would need a large personal incentive and a way of catching them out, should they break it. It'd have to be, say, a £10K "reward" for taking part in the study and if you were spotted (perhaps this could be done via cameras) wearing a high vis when you weren't supposed to, or were riding without one when you should have been, you are not given the award and your results are removed from the study.

b) Rode the same routes as they did before and with the same people. It would cloud the survey if the dangerous lot didn't ride with their like minded mates anymore because of the stick they got for wearing high vis. I don't have a clear idea how you'd do this...

c) Were from all over the country; no point having one group in London, the other in northern Scotland.

Of course, this study would still not be 100% accurate, but it would give a far better indication than we currently have.The survey would need even larger groups and more testing to see what effect different things had: one group in fluoro jackets, one in white lids, one with high vis scotchlite taping, etc. Ideally, you'd also want some "middle of the road" riders as another group.

The downside is, it'd be comparatively expensive to do, for what is a niche market/area of the populace. It would only be pertinent to bikes too. People being stood by the road (eg police/road builders) is a completely different case and I think the results wouldn't reflect (no pun intended) on how much of a difference it makes to them.