Edit: to clarify: the message in the ad is actually ironic/satirical, mocking the advice for cyclists to wear high-viz at night.
It uses the same logic but inverts the parts and responsabilities, by suggesting to motorists (not cyclists) to apply bright paint on their cars.
So this ad is not pro or against high-viz, it’s against victim blaming
Cross-posted from: https://mastodon.uno/users/rivoluzioneurbanamobilita/statuses/113544508246569296
Wait what? There are countries where you can drive without headlights?
Places I’ve lived in the US people keep them off as the default. Here in Seattle people don’t even turn them on at night half the time, I guess they think the street lighting is good enough. I try and signal people to turn on their lights if I’m biking at night and so far none that I know of have actually turned them on
ho, you are still using street ligths?
It’s been years that we cut them on a lot of major axis and after midnight in my town for all the classic roads.
It’s mainly to reduce the electricity bill, have less night pollution (more stars in the sky!) and reduce the speed of the cars when the road is empty (quite effective!).
Side note: since now few years, our cars are sold with front lights always active for visibility purpose (these small lights are cut only when we switching to the big ones)
At my previous apartment the lights outside were so bright it was unreal. Sixth floor, curtains, I could still read books at night without turning on an inside light. Can’t remember the last time I saw more than a dozen stars in the sky even at my new place. Light pollution is a very present thing here
It’s currently raining and foggy in SLC and probably 1/3 of the cars I passed on the road today had no lights at all. Almost hitting a grey car running dark in the fog does not put one in the holiday spirit.
Yes, here in Austria you are allowed to drive without headlights in bright conditions, only are required to turn them on when there is impaired visibility (night, rain, snow, fog, etc.).
E g. Germany
Only for motorcycles it is mandatory all day
Here in the U.S., (and I’m assuming it’s the same elsewhere, but just explaining for simplicity), cars used to have a simple headlight switch, which also lit up the instrument cluster on the dashboard. It was an easy heuristic: If you can’t see the gauges because it’s dark, turn on the headlights.
Now, every car has a marketing-gimmick dashboard lit up all the time with all sorts of multi-color lights. In the cars I’ve been in, the headlight indicator just a small, green light in the corner. Drivers accustomed to the old way think that their headlights are on because the dashboard is lit up. The Toyota Prius was notorious for this when it was new; I used to joke that they didn’t come with headlights as a way to save fuel.
It’s not as bad now, but people just forget o sometimes. It’s worse when cars have day-time running lights, because then the drivers see light coming from the front of the car and think all the marker lights are on.
One of my cars had running lights and always lit digital instrument cluster, but it still managed to hit that same heuristic, only in reverse: to be visible in the daylight, the instrument cluster had to get way brighter, so if the cluster feels absurdly bright, turn on the full headlights.
Nowadays, I think they include a light sensor to keep the cluster at a comfy level regardless of how bright it is, which I think should only be done for ones with automatic lights and only when they’re set to automatic mode, but sadly nobody ever asks my opinion about these things