By Steven Symes 
Our understanding of high-visibility clothing is that it’s supposed to keep the wearer from being hit by vehicles, which is why many tow truck operators use them. Others, from cyclists to road workers also wear high-visibility clothing for their supposed safety. However, a study concludes that the sensors used by cars’ pedestrian crash prevention systems might not detect the presence of a person, thanks to the high-visibility clothing.
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It’s an ironic twist, for sure, and one that’s rather disturbing. After all, if those systems become blind to the people who are often working at the edge of roadways, that might lead to fatal collisions.
This weird wrinkle in the technology was discovered by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety when it decided to add retroreflective strips to dummies for a nighttime pedestrian front crash prevention study.
Likely researchers added those strips in anticipation they would improve pedestrian detection systems’ performance. Imagine their shock when they found some vehicles just ran right into the dummies most of the time.
Human drivers aren’t always perfect at spotting people in high-visibility clothing. But IIHS researchers found one vehicle hit the dummies with the reflective strips 88 percent of the time. That’s really bad.
Granted, in the study the strips were added to black and dark blue clothing. Road workers and tow truck operators usually wear orange or yellow clothes which also have the reflective strips, so real world performance might be a little better, we hope.
This study shows that we as drivers can’t just rely on a modern car’s sensors to watch for dangers on the road. Those technologies should enhance our vigilance, not replace it.
In the meantime, IIHS is looking deeper into this issue, gathering more data in an effort to figure out what can be done. It just goes to show these modern technologies are still very much in their infancy with plenty of bugs to be worked out.
Source: IIHS
Image via IIHS