The recently adopted amendment to the Road Traffic Law requires pedestrians to wear reflective vests outside of the city. The point is, why should we wear them, where can they be ordered and bought?

The new duty concerns reflective elements made of material from which light is reflected from another source (car reflectors). Model situation: Walking in low visibility along the roadside of an unlit street, winding between two villages. Keeping a flashlight in your hand or lighting the road with your mobile is not enough. Reflective elements are understood primarily to be so-called reflective tapes or bracelets; they are often self-winding.

“Reflective and fluorescent items are not expensive. Various pendants, patches, ironing elements, stickers, hand bands, etc. can be purchased for example in haberdashery or bicycle shops, “he says on his BESIP website. According to media reports, reflective elements are also sold in supermarkets, in some grocery stores, in drugstores, in tracks, at post offices or at gas stations.

Reflective tapes, which can be used quickly and easily, can also be purchased at a number of different e-shops. The Heureka.com Internet Purchasing Guide, after entering the term “Reflective Tape” into its search engine, offers a 3×38 cm Self-Reflective Force Reflective Tape for the first position of the products found in the list. It costs from 15 to 89 CZK, most often around 25 to 29 crowns. “It is possible to wear a rolled-up bag or a belt for clothing,” one of the customers of the internet store wrote in his mini-review.

Safety features of reflective materials are best placed at the end of the sleeve, close to the knees and to the waist, level according to BESIP instructions (cyclists, for example, helmet and bicycle). Children can then wear clothes that are already equipped with reflective materials as well as with school bags.

“Better visibility increases security” The reasons leading the legislator to adopt the amendment to Act No. 361/2000 Coll. On road traffic, are clearly preventive in the case of reflective elements. The reflective material is visible at night three times longer than white cloth and more than ten times longer than a blue cloth. These distances have a major influence on whether or not the driver can avoid it. Reflective materials are able to reflect incident light up to two hundred meters. On the other hand, a walker in dark clothing is almost invisible in the dark on the road…

The aforementioned amendment to the Road Traffic Act entered into force on 20 February this year.