SAFER COLOURS

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31421, 14 July 1967, Page 7

SAFER COLOURS

IQNE of Nature’s most remarkable creatures is the chameleon, capable of changing its colour to blend with its surroundings. By doing this it can hide from attack or approach its prey close enough to snap it up. This is fine for the chameleon, but when it comes to a car losing itself in a background of the same colour, the safety risk can be great Ford of Britain have recognised that easy identification of a vehicle is an important safety factor. The company now has an applied psychologist organising a series of experiments to find the safest colours for new cars. This involves photographing cars of various colours in different situations and flashing the results on a screen for fractions of a second. A large audience will then be asked various questions to see if they have

noticed that there was a car in the picture. This is a field in which little research has been done so far. Each object along a driver’s route has a degree of what the experts call “noticeability.” This can depend on a lot of things, such as its size, shape and colour. Obviously, the more noticeable a car’s colour the less likely it is to be hit by another driver. For a while preliminary evidence has shown that yellow shows up best (Coventry Fire Brigade are to use it on their vehicles), but if all vehicles were yellow, the uniformity of colour would make it hard to distinguish a particular car in hea-’y traffic. But here again, if other colours are used, the contrast between certain shade of red and green can produce screaming discords which have an eSect on visual efficiency.