See and be seen. A well-known rule for car drivers is also valid for all pedestrians. If outside the village they will move under reduced visibility, visible reflective elements must be visible. If they do not, they are facing a two-thousand-dollar block penalty.
The relevant amendment to the Road Act has already been signed by the President and will start to apply after it comes out in the Collection of Laws around mid-February.
What is important, however, is that reflexive elements will not be mandatory at night only. The resulting version of the law stipulates that pedestrians must “light” also at dusk, fog, snow or more rain, even in the day.
The law does not say how the reflection element should look exactly or what the minimum size should be. “It is not so important for police officers to choose a specific reflective element for pedestrians to make them visible in road traffic, but whether the purpose has been achieved and the pedestrian is visible for the other visitor visibility,” says Police spokesman Josef Boca.
The size matters
According to Romano Boesky of the Road Safety Team, however, the reflection area should be large enough. “As a minimum, I consider the dimensions of a high-quality reflective tape, which is to be placed over the wrist, or even above the ankle on the side facing the center of the road,” according to expert studies, pedestrians with reflective accessories placed on moving parts of the body. The luminescent points react roughly three times before the reflective surfaces are statically located on the hull, “explains Boesky. At the same time, he appeals to a suitable color, for example, worse experience is with white tapes. Walkers with a white belt, though, fulfill their duty, but the drivers are less responsive to them. “The figure on the roadside can easily blend in with a white horizontal traffic sign, its role is played by the white color of public lighting or headlamps of anti-traffic vehicles,” Boesky says.
Project “We See”
In the beginning, the pedestrian police do not want to scare off and hand down fines. In cooperation with beside, policemen launched the project “We See”, where patrols are handed out free of charge to reflective vests or tapes. “If a traffic police patrol shows a visually impaired pedestrian who moves directly on the road, the need to be seen, “says Boca.
In the first phase, 100,000 bands were handed out and this year the police and the Basic workers give out another quarter of a million tapes. “At the same time, we received fifty thousand reflective bags for seniors,” adds Boca. Bags and tapes are paid from the damages fund managed by the Czech Insurers’ Bureau.