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Comment by dx87 | Hacker News Reader

That seems really irresponsible, the car would be very hard to see if you approach it from the rear at night, especially if the driver installs covers over the brake lights to make them darker. A few years ago where I live in the USA there was a news story being run about a controversial decision to not charge a driver who hit and killed somebody at night because the person they hit was black, wearing all black clothes, and walking in the street. I don't imagine a car painted with a material known to make the car close to invisible against a dark back drop would do any better in court if it was rear-ended.

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Cars driven at night should have lights. It's very dangerous to drive a car of any colour at night without lights.

Even if there are lights it still makes it harder to see, which is more dangerous.

Slippery slope there. Is all black paint dangerous? Grey?

Black paint that has almost no reflectivity at all certainly is.

My family talks about black cows that your headlamps just don't see and how dangerous they are, this would be even more intense.

Most BMWs don't sit idle taking up two lanes of traffic, they only do that for parking spaces.

All matte paint on cars is dangerous, which I suspect is part of why you almost never see it except as a dodgy repair.

Matte vinyl wraps are common on high end cars in NYC. I see one a week, easy.

That’s true. But I’ve found on a couple occasions that I couldn’t see a car in my mirror when driving at night because it was very dark colored and its headlights were hidden by my b-pillar.

This sort of thing wouldn’t happen much when headlights sprayed widely, but newer focused headlights are harder to see from the side.

"Should" is a word that ought to be banned from this sort of discussion.

It's illegal in this country—the UK—to drive at night without lights. Doesn't stop it happening, though. Either someone forgets to turn the lights on, if they're manually controlled, or they actively turn them off because the UI is ambiguous (this happened to me, once), or the filament bulb burns out (again: filament bulbs are/were mandatory in the UK, originally to rule out carbide lamps without actually banning them), or there's a wiring/software fault.

The point is, vehicle safety measures should be fail-safe, and driving an invisible vehicle at night and relying on lights to make yourself seen is kind of the opposite of that.

should. ought. ....

Following that, it's hard to argue that cars shouldn't come with mandatory reflective strips. (Which, of the top of my head, actually doesn't seem like a bad idea.)

Most do. Every car and motorcycle I own has reflectors on all sides.

Do they? Every so often I come up on a vehicle at night with no lights on, and I've never noticed any notable reflectors, like say, runners wear at night for visibility.

As a cyclist who wears hi-viz clothing every time I ride (even in broad daylight), I'm somewhat amazed by how many drivers still don't see me. When I have the opportunity I'll ask a driver who clearly missed me what I could have done to make myself more visible, and I am yet to get any actual advice on that. I'm probably about as visible as I can be.

I also have front and back lights (which I only use when dark as I'm not convinced that they help during the day), hi-viz tape covering parts of my bike, and a large hi-viz sign mounted to the back of my bike as a reflector.

A lot of this I think has to do with distracted driving. I've also read that there's a psychological phenomena where someone might be looking directly at something but still not see it because they didn't expect it. So drivers expect cars on the road, not bikes, so making myself brighter might not help. I would need to make myself look more like a car in this theory. I recall reading someone suggest that looking like a person could help, or having motion (i.e., reflectors on your pedals).

Of course, I don't believe that some sort of perceptual blindness is any excuse. Many people would talk about banning self-driving cars that completely missed certain road users, but I'm not sure most drivers would be as enthusiastic about banning drivers who fail the same test.

Perceptual blindness is a thing even if it isn’t an excuse. Biking somewhere where biking is common and motorists are used to bikes (eg in the Netherlands or even China) is actually very effective, if unachievable.

Yes, moving to where cycling is more common definitely would help in this theory.

After writing my post I've found there's a lot of research in this area: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inattentional_blindness

While Vanta black is much darker than regular black paint when observed well lit areas, i’m not sure that the difference would matter much in the dark, given that regular black vehicles are already effectively invisible but for their lights.

Black paint with a poly-coat at night is highly reflective. Vantablack is going to stay black when you shine a light on it from any direction and reflection angle.

It's hard to see most dark cars at night. You can see for yourself if you come across someone who forgets to turn on their lights. There are two things that help the most:

1) Their own lights

2) Your own lights bouncing off various corner reflectors [1] on the target car

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_reflector

In my country there have been quite a few accidents like that. People here like to wear dark colours, and in-general take a lot of risks on the road (cars, pedestrians and cyclists). There are jay-walking laws, but most people don't pay much attention, and pedestrians will walk into a cross walk without checking for cars, as cars should give way to pedestrians.

A law was passed last year requiring pedestrians walking at night to be more visible to cars by wearimg reflective material. I don't think anyone has been charged for not doing it, however when it came into force the police started giving away reflective armbands and then companies started doing the same for promotion. Basically anyone you see with a bag or rucksack has one of these attached.

If a driver is installing covers over their lights I don't think the color of the paint is the most irresponsible part

Unhooking the cable seems easier than installing covers. On most cars, you can get to it by peeling back the lining on the sides of the trunk.

> controversial decision to not charge a driver who hit and killed somebody at night because the person they hit was black, wearing all black clothes, and walking in the street.

I don't think there has been a history of racism against dark colored automobiles, so probably slightly less controversial..

It's exclusively a show car. You can take it easy.

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