Re:How gray became the king of color
by jabl on Wednesday August 17, 2022 @01:58AM
(#32492823)
If you ignore fashion and/or aesthetics, there are good reasons for white or gray/silver cars. Gray/silver is good for hiding dirt, so you don't have to wash it as often. White is cooler in the summer, and white is very visible so there's a (slightly) lower chance of being involved in a collision.
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>white is very visible
Not so much when there's snow on the ground or in fog.
Well, yes and no. There's two major components to visibility, the light intensity and contrast with the background. Against a background of fresh white snow, a white car will obviously not be the best choice. However, in most cases winter driving, at least where I live, is not driving in fresh white snow. But rather snow around the roads is kind of dirty and grayish, frequently the snow has been eroded away from the road surfaces. The problem from a visibility standpoint is that it's often kinda dark as the sun doesn't get that high in the sky in the winter and often during normal commute times the sun is down. In such cases a white car has an advantage, being the most reflective color.
So all in all, well, I haven't seen a study wrt winter visibility, so I'm just making things up, but I'd think white is far from the worst, certainly better than dark colors. Probably some color like lime yellow or such that you frequently see on emergency vehicles would be better, but few people choose a color like that for a civilian car.
Generally true but a thousand of Japanese live in massive snowy area so it could be more problem. Still IMO black is the worst color for visibility because night is come everyday in every location.