Most riders try to be visible. Far fewer know that being visible and being conspicuous are two different things, and that the difference is measurable.
Visibility is whether you can physically be detected, the contrast, the light bouncing back, the size of you against the background. It's the part you can measure in a lab.
But it only tells you whether a driver could see you, not whether they actually will.
Conspicuity is that second part. It's whether a driver notices you in the middle of everything else going on.
Picture a rider in full hi-vis on a busy street, surrounded by signs, parked cars and brake lights.
That rider might be visible, but whether any driver picks them out of everything in their field of view is a different question.
Everything around them is competing for the same attention, and that is the difference between being visible and being conspicuous.
In QUT night studies, drivers recognised 90 percent of riders who had reflectors on their ankles and knees.
For riders in a reflective vest alone, that dropped to 50 per cent. Fluoro managed 15 per cent, black just 2 percent (Wood et al., 2012).
It isn't how much you wear.
It's what the brain reads as a person, and movement low on the body, at the ankles and knees, reads as a human far quicker than a bright panel across the chest.
Being conspicuous is only the rider's half of the job.
The other half belongs to drivers. "Looked but failed to see" crashes happen because drivers are scanning for cars, not bikes.
Expect riders. Look twice. A metre matters.