reflector basics

Trabant or Volvo Style Safety?

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Like most everything else, not all reflectors are created equal. You can buy “reflective gear” and “safety reflectors” and yes, or course, they all reflect – at least a little bit. But how do you know if they reflect enough? You want the Volvo, not the Trabant when it comes to the safety of yourself and your loved ones, but how do you know which is which?
Let’s take a look at two reflective slap bracelets/slap wraps, both with a black and white pattern, but made with different manufacturing techniques and different reflective materials. The striped one, we found online, while the other one is “Baroque” from our own webshop.

Comparing good and bad safety reflectors and reflective gear.
Diagonal stripes printed ON the reflective surface while the baroque pattern of the funflector wrap is printed on the material UNDER the 3M Scotchlite material. Surprised about the result?

How is the safety reflector printed?

As you can see in the image, the two safety reflectors may look similar, but the way they are manufactured are vastly different. The striped one is made in bulk and then printed with logos and patterns as orders come in. But what happens if you print on top of the reflective material? Well, obviously, you loose reflective power where the ink is as you can see in the image. The funflector wrap, on the other hand, has been assembled with a printed material that goes UNDER the reflective layer. That way you can get as much colors/prints as you want, and the entire surface is still totally reflective. Obviously, this makes manufacturing more complicated as the sealing machine needs to be fired up for each order. You can tell the difference by wiggling the reflector and see if the clarity of the print looks different depending on the angle. If the clarity changes, then you know that the microprism layer is on top of the print and will reflect the car headlights back to the drivers to its fullest capacity. Learn more in one of our previous posts.

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Trabant or Volvo Style Safety?Read More »

Trabant or Volvo Style Safety? Read More »

Reflector Craft Projects

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If you were to wear a small mirror instead of a funflector safety reflector on your jacket, the light from the cars would reflect back all over the road, trees and buildings, instead of to the driver as is the case with safety reflectors. In our last blog post we described how safety reflectors (retroreflectors) works. To better understand, a craft project to make a model of a retroreflector might help. This is what you need:

  • 2-3 empty cereal boxes
  • ruler
  • marker
  • scissors or knife
  • aluminum foil
  • 3 pipe cleaners or thin drinking straws in different colors
  • 5 twist ties

And this is how you do it:

Measure the same distance on the three sides from one corner and connect with a line to cut along.
Measure the same distance on the three sides from one corner and connect with a line to cut along.

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Reflector Craft ProjectsRead More »

Reflector Craft Projects Read More »

Science Project with Retroreflectors

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We all have them in our photo albums: the photos taken with a flash straight into a window. The reflection of the harsh flash hovers over the heads of your friends because you forgot to take a step to the side and shoot a little bit diagonally into the window. If the window was a retroreflector, like a funflector safety reflector or a road sign, you would have got the flash bouncing back into your camera lens no matter where you were shooting from. Below and in our next post are some easy and fun ideas for a science project for schools or scout groups. These will help understand how retroreflectors work and why they can be so effective despite their small size.

Science Project with Safety Reflector & Laser Pointer

This video shows how a laser beam gets reflected right back to where it came from by a safety reflector.
Watch how it lights up the laser pointer and the hand holding it! (Please make sure the laser pointer is handled by an adult.)

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Science Project with RetroreflectorsRead More »

Science Project with Retroreflectors Read More »

Glow In the Dark or Reflective?

/ reflector basics, traffic safety

“My reflector does not glow in the dark, what’s wrong?” That’s a question we often get and luckily, nothing is wrong. It’s “reflective”, not “glow-in-the-dark”, and there is a big difference!

Glow-in-the-dark products make light on their own, and have a built-in energy source. It can be a battery or a chemical reaction (like in glow sticks that you need to “pop” before they light up). Eventually they run out of power and stop emitting light.  Glow-in-the-dark products often emit light in all directions and light up the nearby surrounding but have a limited range.

Reflective and glow-in-the-dark is not the same and the products have different purposes. Glow-i-the-dark toys are good at lighting up the immediate surrounding. Reflectors are good at bouncing back the car head light to the driver at a long range. Choose wisely!
Reflective and glow-in-the-dark is not the same and the products have different purposes. Glow-i-the-dark toys are good at lighting up the immediate surrounding. Reflectors are good at bouncing back the car head light to the driver at a long range. Choose wisely!

Reflective (or more correctly “retro-reflective”) means reflecting light back to where the light came from. If you shine a flash light on a pedestrian safety reflector (or a reflective road sign) …

Glow In the Dark or Reflective?Read More »

Glow In the Dark or Reflective? Read More »

5 Things You Need to Know Before Buying Reflectors

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Good reflectors have saved lives in the Scandinavian countries for decades. There are funflector® and other brand name as well as generic pedestrian reflectors on the market. What is the difference? And how do know if you are buying a “good” reflector or not?

Reflective slap bracelets in cheerful colors and designs
Reflective slap bracelets in cheerful colors and designs. How do you know if they are effective?

What do consumers, walking and running groups, PTA boards, corporate buyers and other organizations need to know before they buy safety reflectors?

If you want to make it easy for yourself, look for the mark EN13356, a European standard grown from research in the Scandinavian countries. It’s become the de-facto world standard for reflectors for non-professional use. Behind the fun designs, we take safety very seriously and you should too. Here are the most important things that you need to know:

1. Distance

The purpose of safety reflectors is to let drivers know that you are there so they can adjust their driving accordingly. …

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5 Things You Need to Know Before Buying Reflectors Read More »

A Colorful World Where “HOW” Matters

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We love colors and colorful reflectors are fun! So how do we make funflector® reflectors in all the colors of the rainbow when the 3M Scotchlite material only comes in clear (white), bright yellow and bright orange? (And the reason for that is that other colors result in material that does not reflect strongly enough to meet high standards).
funflector® reflectors are colorful because we  put colored material under the clear reflective layer, as most manufacturers of EN13356 compliant reflectors do.

funflector® reflectors are colorful because we vary the colored layer UNDER a clear layer of 3M Scotchlite.
funflector® reflectors are colorful because we vary the colored layer UNDER a clear layer of 3M Scotchlite. You can find the paw print reflectors here >

Some of our reflectors include a printed design and we also manufacture reflectors with custom logos and prints. There are different ways to do that and how it’s done matters to your safety. …

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A Colorful World Where “HOW” Matters Read More »

500+ Feet Visibility!

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Good reflectors should make pedestrians visible from a distance of 125 meters (410 feet), but we wanted to know if we could see our funflector® reflectors from even further away. Would they meet the 500 feet visibility target?
However, first let us be clear about why we care so much about safety reflectors:

That is how much of a difference reflectors make!
We found a dark street, straight for over 500 feet and with very little traffic. Here is what we saw of a pedestrian facing us with two reflectors hanging from front belt loops.The first image below was captured at 600 feet. We are very excited and pleased with the result since it is very important for us to provide as much safety as possible for our customers. A note of caution though: reality is rarely staged like this, so please wear at least two reflectors, but place one back and one front – OR- one left and one right. You never know exactly how you will be turned the moment the driver needs to see you! Alternatively, put a slap bracelet around your ankle, the visibility from all directions is pretty good unless you carry bags in your hands that hang low down.

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500+ Feet Visibility!Read More »

500+ Feet Visibility! Read More »

Why EN13356?

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Safety reflectors increase visibility at night, but are they doing enough to make drivers notice you? How do you know?

Look for the CE EN13356 mark when buying safety reflectors
Look for the CE EN13356 mark when buying reflectors

If you bought or received a funflector® reflector, you might have noticed the CE EN13356 marks on the labels. (The CE is a European mark for all types of consumer goods and should be followed with a more specific standard). Did you think you didn’t need to care since you are not in Europe?
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Why EN13356?Read More »

Why EN13356? Read More »

Glow Sticks or Safety Reflectors for Halloween?

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What’s the best way to to be visible to drivers on Halloween – and on other dark nights? Many Halloween safety tips suggest flash lights, glow sticks or safety reflectors as equally viable options. We wanted to figure out how bright glow sticks from the local supermarket are compared to our funflector safety reflectors. This is what it looks like along a highway:

This is what we used :  a thin multicolored glow necklace, a thick pink glow stick on a string, a thick green glow stick with a sword’s handle attached to it, 4 reflectors and two funflector wraps.

Glowsticks and safety reflectors for Halloween
Glow sticks or safety reflectors for Halloween? For scale, the reflectors are about 2-1/2 inch across.


Interesting observations on glow sticks and safety reflectors:

  • When there are no cars around, the reflectors sometimes catch the light from a nearby traffic light. That’s why they give a reddish glow.
  • In the video, you can see how the light from passing cars only light up the lower half of the kids. That’s why it’s important to have reflectors low down. And you must have noticed the benefit of letting the reflectors dangle!
  • What you cannot see in the video is that the green glow stick, which was the brightest one, lasted less than 4 hours. The pink one had stopped glowing the next morning. The necklace, which only lid up half way around, kept glowing for several days. But you might have noticed that the necklace did not glow strongly enough to show up show up in the video…
  • Glow sticks are fun for kids to play with and they did light up a corner of a dark room. But, for traffic safety, you need to make sure they are  significantly brighter than those we got.
  • Sadly, we now have a pile of glow sticks to add to landfill. The safety reflectors can be put on jackets and backpacks and provide safety for the whole dark season.
glow sticks vs safety reflectors for Halloween
The glow sticks we bought lid up the corner of the room

Happy Halloween!

The funflector team

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Favorite Places to Put Fun Reflectors 1 – On My Kids

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My kids are precious to me, so of course they get decorated with pedestrian safety reflectors and they love it! We live along a busy highway and need to walk along the sidewalk a couple of hundred feet before we can turn into a quiet street where the school bus stops. Winter mornings are dark, so the reflectors are a great way to tell drivers that there are kids around.

Kids with safety reflectors along busy road
You see them. Do they see you? All school kids should wear some safety reflectors on their jackets and/or backpack for increased safety when waiting for the school bus early mornings or coming home after dark.

Kids Need More Than One Reflector!

At minimum, a pedestrian should wear two reflectors; front and back or left and right. That way the chances for a driver to notice you from any direction are pretty good. Optimal height is 2-4 feet above ground where the car lights are the strongest. Also, the more the reflector dangles, the more attention it creates.

Child with safety reflectors left, front and right for optimal surround visibility.
Child with safety reflectors left, front and right for optimal surround visibility.

Our reflector tags come with ball chains to make them easy to attach to clothes and bags. On the front, the jacket zipper pull is the #1 choice. Jean jackets don’t have zippers, but in most cases the button hole on the front pocket works very well since it is rarely used for anything else.

Horse and heart safety reflectors on school backpack.
Horse and heart safety reflectors on school backpack. Most backpacks have enough zipper pulls to hang several reflectors on.

The back is trickier on jackets, but backpacks, sling or messenger bags frequently have enough zipper pulls, buckles or other places to stick the ball chain through. Normally, we hang two reflectors on each bag, but when my kids are in “collect & trade” mode, there can be many more.

Side pockets of fleece jackets and windbreakers are perfect places to hang safety reflectors!
Side pockets of fleece jackets and windbreakers are perfect places to hang safety reflectors for kids! They also dangle nicely to create more attention.

Some jackets have side pockets with zippers so the reflectors can go left and right. Those are also good for getting the reflectors in the optimal height for the car lights and for dangling nicely below the hem. One of my daughter’s jackets has a clasp meant for ski gloves which instead came in handy for attaching the reflector.

Elisabeth

Safety reflector hanging on kid's jacket
This winter jacket has a clasp for attaching ski mittens to. Perfect for the reflector!

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