Cyclists light up autumn dark with reflective material

Like night and day. With a reflective material spray, the bike and the dark-colored cyclist lights up like a Christmas tree, but he is difficult to find in the long run.

Life Paint is called Volvo’s controversial reflex spray for cyclists and pedestrians. Spraying the contents of clothes, helmets and bicycles makes you almost as luminous.

 

Life Paint has not just brought excitement among the cyclists. In Sweden, there was even a resistance movement to the security prints in the social media.

Volvo has developed a reflective safety spray that is invisible in daylight but extremely reflective in the dark.

The spray is designed to respond to the car headlight and reflects the light straight back from the light source.

Life Paint can easily be washed away and does not damage the underlying surface.

The effect lasts a week depending on the amount and the type of surface it is sprayed on.

The spray consists of translucent glue, reflective micro particles and propellant (butane and propane).

 

HBL’s cyclist patrol sought a guaranteed road in the Sobs forests to see how the spray works in practice. And sure it works.

We started spraying the right half of my synthetic bike jacket, my bike trousers and the helmet with the reflex spray. On the left half we left untreated.

We did not save on the spray and the first can of 19.90 we emptied the fabrics. With the second can we sprayed the right half of the bicycle, frame, tire, kettle and splash screens.

So it’s carried out in the woods. The flash from the mobile camera reveals mercilessly that we cheated in the country. After a few minor corrections we get into the terrain.

 

The idea is to cross the country road in the darkest possible place.

When I turn the untreated side of the car’s headlight about a hundred meters away, it turns out that the tire’s tire has a narrow reflective edge, as well as the jacket. However, the overall impression is that I look very bad.

However, when I turn the sprayed side against the headlights, I look like a luminous ghost.

 

But it is clear that the reflex spray gives visibility.

On the bicycle frame, the spray seems to get stuck badly. It might have been drying for a while. On the other hand, it has stuck well and reflects the light sharply.

When I’m in a normally lit room, the reflection color is only slightly on the pants and just not at all on the reflective jacket. According to the manufacturer, the color eventually disappears in the laundry.

 

We have chosen black clothes because the fingertips say ninety percent of cyclists also do it. On the way out to the Roux, we have seen a dozen cyclists halfway through the roads and everyone has been wearing something dark.

 

When I’m wearing a pair of white jeans and a granular bike jacket, I get caught up in the car’s headlight. The effect is almost as good as with the reflex spray.

Life Paint has not unexpectedly aroused vehement debate in our western neighboring country where cyclists ask if it is their duty to take security measures alone.

 

In the highly read “Cyclist blog” in Stockholm, the blogs Christian Dillinger and Jerome Woofers write that it is obvious that cyclists are visible, but that they are clever in their attitude to products like Life Paint.

“How badly designed is a driving environment where other road users need to look like light bulbs to reduce the risk of being hit,” they ask.

 

It’s not about visibility. It is about respect, the ability to imagine the situation of other road users, to strive to adjust their driving to surrounding traffic. Or, you’re kidding others and just gazing on, no color helps in the world… People are no longer satisfied with ordinary lights, the reflective light from reflex spray and reflective tape is better, but it blinks like Christmas trees on the streets. But Stockholm traffic has not become much more considerate for it, “writes duo.

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