Some Colorful Trivia...

A friend and i were talking about his car and his most recent paint job. After a few remarks, i asked him if he were painting it 'sporty red.'

Well, no he told me. "Its more accident prone"

And then the debate started.

I said it was just a lot of bullshit about that and that the insurance guys just want to charge higher premiums for red and black.

Truth is, i said, its most probably because the most maniacal drivers like to view themselves as the racer types and get the most sporty-lookin cars available.

And red would of course be the color of choice. Plus, since red promotes aggressiveness, the already maniacal driving instincts would be more... maniacal :)

note---- Afterwards, i purposely drove slower than normal and counted the number of cars that overtook me with gusto. There were ten. Seven were red cars. Proof enough? ---

So there. Its psychological. "So you dont have to worry about accidents since youre not a psychopatic driver." I said.

And then his argument began.

Well, maybe thats the psychological angle, but the truth is, that red is the hardest color to spot at night. Not black, as i obviously thought.

First of all, black cars would look blacker than their surroundings, so you have an idea that they're there. From afar, you would even see the dark shadow coming at you.

Red cars on the other hand, for some reason, would be harder to spot at night. Thats why some drivers keep ramming into red cars and never knowing it.

Apparently the US Navy also knew about this and used red lights in their studies on night vision and stealth tactics.

Red does not ruin night vision and is overall "softer" than other lights. Its the reason why red lights are the only lights allowed for developing pictures. And the reason girls in the red light districts tend to look better than normal ;)

"Ahhh...." I said. So given the fact that red cars are harder to see, and the more mentally unstable drivers tend to use them, this would of course, increase the probability of accidents by a huge factor.

And what would be the safest? Thats a cinch. Yellow, most likely, or white right? Of course.

Satisfied with the conclusions, i went home and forgot all about it.

Until insomnia set in.

I just HAD to know for sure.

So i did a search on the internet and found out that some researchers were actually bored enough to actually study the effect of color.

The Study

After studying tons and tons of road accidents, they came to the following conclusion that the safest car is actually silver (not white, but close enough).

and most accident prone car is...

...................BROWN!!!! And they have no idea why.

Just proves that whatever logical reasons you have, you're definitely asking for trouble if your car looks like shit.