For several seasons now hi-vis has been fashionable for bike wear. But last month roads minister Jesse Norman suggested that the government’s wide-ranging review of cycle safety would consider if cyclists should be compelled to wear high-visibility clothing if there was evidence that wearing hi-vis clothing makes you a safer.

What evidence is there that supports wearing hi-vis clothing?
There’s not a huge body of evidence but there was a Danish randomised trial involving 6,793 cyclists, published in scientific journal Safety Science in August this year.

It found a 47 per cent reduction in incidents involving other road users where the cyclist was injured when cyclists were wearing a hi-vis jacket with reflective strips.

So, hi-vis does work then?
It’s not quite that simple. The limitation of hi-vis clothing is that fluorescent colours work by converting UV light in sunlight to something we can see so they’re bright in daylight, but street lights and headlights don’t give off much UV light, so it makes little difference in darker conditions.

A 2006 review by health network Cochrane of 42 studies found that drivers were more likely to see pedestrians and cyclists in fluorescent clothing during the day.