The only outfit associated with a significant change in mean passing proximities was the **police/video-recording jacket. **
Notably, whilst some outfits seemed to discourage motorists from passing within 1 metre of the rider, approximately 1-2% of overtakes came within 50 cm no matter what outfit was worn. This suggests there is little riders can do, by altering their appearance, to prevent the very closest overtakes
This is quite discouraging, but it seems to ring true in my experience. I’ve had quite a few drivers, who have come close to hitting me (even while walking at a crosswalk), claim that they “didn’t see me” while I wore high-viz everything and had lights to further improve visibility.
How do we, as cyclists, even deal with “driver blindness”?
Even good drivers fuck up. One watched my bike too much and veered off the road into the bike lane. Luckily there wasn’t anyone right there, but that was just luck there was no disaster
I replaced my bike from a fast carbon fibre high racer (a type of recumbent) to a recumbent mountain bike (also a high racer) so I can be more comfortable in the shared path that is well separated (by hundreds of metres in many places) from the road, but which is too worn and warped for the carbon bike’s 22mm high pressure tyres