Any research (or reliable statistics) on benefits of making yourself more visible (blinking light even in daytime, bright colors)? Someone just posted this on our local cycling list serv.

It's about Motion Induced Blindness. Their point was that fixing your gaze on something on the dashboard can blind you to things that are moving (like bicycle near you).

There are some things we can do to help this:


Wearing a bike light even during the day (flashing style)
Wear brighter colors
Maybe bright paint/decals on your bike.


But I wanted to see if there was any research/stats on the subject before I increased the local visual pollution (with my light, etc.)
The following study, carried out in 2009, seems to have attempted to answer the same question:

Kwan I, Mapstone J. Interventions for increasing pedestrian and cyclist visibility for the prevention of death and injuries. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2006, Issue 4. Art. No.: CD003438. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD003438.pub2.

This looks like a meta study, the full text of the article contains links to the various sources they examined and the articles they found.  Their conclusion was that the research is inconclusive: "the effect of visibility aids on pedestrian and cyclist safety remains unknown".

If you go beyond visibility and look at changes you can make to your appearance and their effect on driver behaviour then you might like the 2006 research on overtaking by Dr Ian Walker who has sparked some controversy with his research concluding that cars leave cyclists more room if the cyclist does not wear a helmet or if they grow their hair long.