7/22/2008 3:12:52 AM Author: newsAuthor
The state Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles has a new safety campaign aimed at changing the habits and look of some of the most tradition-bound, change-resistant drivers on the road -- bikers.
Get ready for this: It's urging motorcyclists to start dressing like bicyclists.
No, no. It's not urging Spandex on motorcyclists. Nobody wants that. Nobody even wants to visualize that. But highway safety experts are telling motorcyclists to toss the black leather jackets, ditch the denim jackets with sleeves torn off, and trade the black leather vests in favor of more visible colors. The kind that would stand out for drivers. Screaming yellows! Lurid limes! Hot pinks!
Culturally speaking, this is a hard sell. Though on a strictly rational level, it makes sense.
Bicyclists have long been aware that if your clothes blend in with the asphalt, you could find yourself blending in with the asphalt as well.
That's why most serious, long-distance bicyclists dress in those goofy primary-colored and sherbet-colored shirts. Clothing for which they are universally derided as girly men. Clothing that makes them all-around objects of ridicule by motorcyclists and SUV drivers.
This does not deter us. It's better to be an object of ridicule on the road than an object of pity by the side of the road.
I looked around the finish line the last time I went on a large-group bicycle ride and it looked like a convention of retired super-heroes and sidekicks -- all that Spandex, all those primary colors and gleaming reflective materials. I felt like I was in a panel from The Tick comic books.
But I digress.
The Department of Highway Safety's new slogan defiantly challenges both sartorial tradition and customary adverb usage -- "Ride Proud, Dress Loud." The highway safety people are calling for more lurid paint jobs on choppers, more reflective tape everywhere and a far more peacocky dress code.
Speaking as somebody who's grown up around Bike Weeks, I suspect the department's "Motorcycle Conspicuity Campaign" is going to be a hard, uphill drive in low gear on the pot-holed dirt road of social custom and group self-image. Just to take a metaphor and wring it out a little.
Dressing dark and menacing has been part of the biker mythos since the uniform was featured in "The Wild One," back in 1953. You don't ditch a half century of cool on the basis of a single public service campaign.
And as natty as I look in a safety-yellow, reflective miracle fabric bicycle jersey, I'm guessing that it would prove an object of unfavorable public comment if I wore it to the Iron Horse Saloon during Bike Week. (A light pilsner and energy bar for me, barkeep!)
Still, a lot of bikers are getting killed on the road and it can't hurt to give distracted drivers stronger visual cues that, hey, there's a motorcycle in the next lane. Florida had 550 motorcycle fatalities last year, according to the department. The year before that, 521 motorcyclists died on Florida roads with Volusia County ranking No. 4 in motorcycle deaths, according to the Florida Traffic Crash Statistics Report.
There is what biologists call a survival advantage in dressing funny. If this takes hold over time, the Bike Week parade could turn into a pretty vibrant affair, indeed.
From:www.news-journalonline.com
