Eight years ago, I recalled my comical attempts to sell bicycle safety flags that had been in American Youth Hostels’ storage room for, probably, a decade.
That got me to thinking about how we, as cyclists, can make ourselves more visible to motorists. Perhaps there is no better way than this:
The '80s brought us "fade" paint jobs.
The '90s--oh, where do I begin? It was (mostly) a great time for me personally (including as a cyclist), but there was all manner of insanity in the bike world. As someone who was both a road and off-road (mainly the former) cyclist for most of the decade, I can say I'm unbiased in laying much of the blame on mountain bikes, which brought us bar ends in weird shapes, wheels with spokes that looked like the twist-ties from bags of bread and anything that could be made in a neon color.
This century/millenium has also brought its share of unfortunate trends. Some of them start off as sensible, even laudable ideas, like bike garments designed to make us more visible to motorists (and, sometimes, each other). But they end up in absurdity or just sheer tackiness:
I mean, why do you need an emoji to be seen?
