At the beginning of 2014 in Ireland, there will be a regulation that obliges all motorcyclists to ride in a reflective vest both during the day and at night.
In France, it ended with nationwide protests, in which other road users joined. The government withdrew from the idea, offering instead compulsory wearing by the motorcyclists’ reflective wristbands. Now the Irish authorities have made it clear – all motorcyclists will have to wear reflective vests, regardless of their attitude to this piece of clothing. According to the authors of the bill for obliging users of two-wheelers to take care of their own visibility, it aims to reduce the number of fatal accidents involving motorcyclists. Unfortunately, as usual in the case of regulations created by bureaucrats, two facts were not taken into account: the first is the material of which the vests are made – artificial fibers block the airflow and can cause overheating. The second is motorcycle clothing, which is increasingly equipped by the manufacturer with large reflective elements, sometimes covering most of the surface of the body of the rider. So what is the point of putting a vest on a reflective jacket?
Sentences among the interested are divided – some believe that the vest will actually help to see and identify… the goal they are for some drivers. Others argue that not having a hi vis vest will be another pretext to punish their mandates. Once again, a situation is created in which the citizen is to the law and not the right of the citizen. And it’s hard to resist the impression that the issue of compulsory visibility of a motorcyclist is slowly, but inevitably heading in our direction…