The recently adopted amendment to the Road Traffic Law requires pedestrians to wear reflective vests outside of the city. The point is, why should we wear them, where can they be ordered and bought - and how many will come to us?
The new duty concerns reflective elements made of material from which light is reflected from another source (car reflectors). Model situation: Walking in low visibility along the roadside of an unlit street, winding between two villages. Keeping a flashlight in your hand or lighting the road with your mobile is not enough. Reflective elements are understood primarily to be so-called reflective tapes or bracelets; they are often self-winding. Some are a Velcro fastener.
"Reflective and fluorescent items are not expensive. Various pendants, patches, ironing elements, stickers, hand bands, etc. can be purchased for example in haberdashery or bicycle shops, "he says on his BESIP website. According to media reports, reflective elements are also sold in supermarkets, in-home grocery stores, in drugstores, in tracks, at post offices or at gas stations.
Reflective tapes, which can be used quickly and easily, can also be purchased at a number of different e-shops. The Heureka.com Internet Purchasing Guide, after entering the term "Reflective tape" into its search engine, offers a 3x38 cm self-reflective Force Reflective tape for the first position of the products found in the list. It costs from 15 to 89 CZK, most often around 25 to 29 crowns.
Safety features of reflective materials are best placed at the end of the sleeve, close to the knees and to the waist, level according to BESIP instructions (cyclists, for example, helmet and bicycle). Children can then wear clothes that are already equipped with reflective materials as well as with school bags.
The reasons which led the legislator to adopt the amendment to Act No. 361/2000 Coll. On road traffic, are clearly preventive in the case of reflective elements. The reflective material is visible at night three times longer than white cloth and more than ten times longer than a blue cloth. These distances have a major influence on whether or not the driver can avoid it. Reflective materials are able to reflect incident light up to two hundred meters. On the other hand, a walker in dark clothing is almost invisible in the dark on the road...
"More than seven hundred people die on our roads a year. And the pedestrians on which the campaign is headed are one of the most endangered groups. Every seventh person in our country dies in a road accident as a pedestrian. Of them, every eight out of the village. And this is a warning! "Said last October in the presentation of the BESIP campaign" Do we see? ", focused on the visibility of pedestrians, Transport Minister Dan.
In 2014, a total of 112 pedestrians were killed in accidents, of which 65 were in the night. Over 58% of pedestrian fatalities accounted for overnight accidents, but it was 79% outside the municipality.
The aforementioned amendment to the Road Traffic Act entered into force on 20 February this year.
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