So back in the day, the preferred color for visibility was some combination of yellow reflective stuff and hunter orange. Everything from vests for highway flagmen to state police raincoats was orange and bright yellow.
Now, in these exciting modern times, I’m seeing visibility vests and clothing in shades of flourescent green.
It seems to my old-school sensibilities that donning the color of Robin Hood’s merry men isn’t really the best way to be highly visibile, at least during the spring and summer in most non-urban areas. But I am of course ever confident in the relentless march of Science, so figure there’s some reason for moving to green instead of yellow/orange.
MY WAGs would be that orange and yellow vests my blend in with orange and yellow cones, barrels, signs etc… so you’d be less likely to see someone walking amongst them OR after 50 years of seeing yellow or orange vests people are desensitized to them so they went to green so they people stand out more.
I have been told that they stand out better than orange. For a while some firetrucks were painted that color but I heard that people didn’t pay attention to them because it was an off color or something. No cite
Depends on the nature of the color deficiency. There is more than one way in which to be colorblind.
In my case, yes, it would probably still be “day-glo” although depending on the exact shade I may see it as yellow instead of green.
Unless you’re colorblind, in which case you eye may NOT be most sensitive to green. Since that’s about 10% of the population (at least in North America) that may be a problem.
Where do you live? Everyone I’ve seen around Colorado has gotten yellow vests like this. There was a new federal regulation that came out that states anyone working on a public roadway must wear an ANSI-compliant vest. This now includes EMS, police, and fire so there’s a lot more vests out there now.
That actually demonstrates my point: If you click on the ‘high visibility’ category in that link (or go straight there) you can see both old-school yellow and new-school greenish-yellow (to my eye closer to green than to yellow).
I was hoping somebody knew why the shift to green was happening. As I said, to me it seems to reduce visibility in non-urban areas for much of the year over much of the country (including Back East where I am).
Just in case anyone was wondering about the colorblind issue - those both look very very yellow to me and I wouldn’t call either one green. Which, oddly enough, means it might be MORE visible to me than to people with normal color vision. That would really pop out against trees and grass for me.
Maybe the guy who made the purchase decision was also colorblind…?
How can anything be 300% less likely to do anything? Wouldn’t 100% less likely put you at zero?
So a firetruck en route to a fire has (let’s say) a 1/1000 chance of getting into an accident. What would the odds be of having an accident if it was painted that color?