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High-Visibility Clothes May Confuse Crash Prevention Systems, IIHS Says

Mar 06, 2025

A new study shows those reflective jackets might help humans see you at night, but confuddle a car's active safety tech.

High-visibility vests tend to be standard equipment for highway construction workers and other people who work around roadways for a reason — they help drivers spot (and avoid hitting) the folks wearing them. But a new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety suggests that they could be something of a double-edged sword; while high-viz clothing are more visible to humans, they may interfere with automated crash prevention systems.

Pedestrian automatic braking systems are generally regarded as effective, according to the IIHS, reducing the severity rate of pedestrian crashes by 27% — but dark roads have been shown to reduce the efficacy of these automatic safety systems to near zero. To test the effect of adding reflective wear, researchers at IIHS rounded up 2023 model year versions of three popular crossovers: the Honda CR-V, Mazda CX-5, and Subaru Forester.

Researchers outfitted an adult-sized dummy with either a black sweatshirt and pants, a retro-reflective jacket and black pants, an all-black sweatsuit with reflective strips, and an all-white sweatsuit to test the identification capability of these vehicle's automatic braking systems. The dummy then crossed the "road" perpendicular to the path of the vehicle, which was traveling at 25 miles per hour. The test was conducted several times, under three different lighting conditions: with no roadway lighting, with 10 lux of illumination in the crosswalk, and with the federally recommended 20 lux in the crossing zone.

Subaru's Forester and its standard EyeSight safety system managed to avoid collision with the dummy in every trial but one run of the test involving 10 lux of light and the reflective strips. Meanwhile, the CR-V and CX-5 hit the dummy 84% and 88% of the time, respectively, and both failed to slow at all when the dummy was wearing the jacket with reflective strips, regardless of overhead lighting. However, all three vehicles managed to slow substantially when the dummy was dressed in black and the high-beam headlights were activated. Notably, this high-beam test was conducted with no roadway light at all.

Use of low-beam headlights dinged the performance of the CR-V and CX-5 significantly in the same all-black clothing test, with the Honda failing to slow at all under no roadway lighting. The CX-5 slowed its speed by less than a third under these same conditions. Adhering to the federal standard of 20 lux of crosswalk lighting slowed the speed of the Honda and Mazda by 39% and 84%, respectively, when the dummy was dressed in all black.

Donning a reflective jacket helped the dummy's chances with the Mazda more than the Honda, as the CR-V failed to slow in any of those trials. The Mazda slowed by 53% under no roadway lighting, 58% under 10 lux, and 62% under 20 lux when the dummy wore a reflective jacket. Curiously, 20 lux of light actually helped the Mazda identify the dummy in all black better than the dummy in the reflective jacket.

Wearing white had a variable effect, depending on the vehicle. Honda's system failed to identify the white sweatsuit-wearing dummy without roadway light, though it slowed by 95% with the same dummy under 10 lux of lightning. 20 lux of lighting decreased this to 62%. Mazda's system stayed relatively consistent, staying within a 6% speed variation under all three lighting scenarios, when the dummy wore white.

IIHS researchers said it's not immediately clear why the Mazda and Honda systems struggled to recognize the reflective strips. However, given the number of construction workers and late-night joggers who rely on such material for an added layer of safety, the safety watchdog says this development is concerning.

"These results suggest that some automakers need to tweak their pedestrian automatic emergency braking systems," IIHS President David Harkey said in a statement. "It’s untenable that the clothes that pedestrians, cyclists, and roadway workers wear to be safe may make them harder for crash avoidance technology to recognize."

A New York transplant hailing from the Pacific Northwest, Emmet White has a passion for anything that goes: cars, bicycles, planes, and motorcycles. After learning to ride at 17, Emmet worked in the motorcycle industry before joining Autoweek in 2022 and Road & Track in 2024. The woes of alternate side parking have kept his fleet moderate, with a 2014 Volkswagen Jetta GLI and a BMW 318i E30 street parked in his Queens community.

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