Pedestrian Safety

Equinox 2021 – Shorter Days are Coming

/ traffic safety / , , , , ,

Where did the summer go? Tomorrow, September 22, 2021, is already equinox, the day when day and night are equally long. From there on, the days are rapidly getting shorter, making it harder to avoid being out in the dark. Last weekend, we had a furry visitor and we barely managed to take the post-dinner walk before it was pitch black. Just in the last week Chicago has lost 21 minutes of sunlight, 13 in the evening and 8 in the morning. Today, the sun rises at 6:37am and is gone again at 6:47pm. It’s hard to adjust your schedule when the light is changing that rapidly, even for us who are tracking it meticulously. Over the summer, we were a little lazy and did not always bring safety reflectors, but that has to change now. Equinox also means safety reflector season because who wants to get caught unseen in the dark? Better seen than sorry!

Safety reflectors are must-haves for dog walkers and dogs alike now when the nights will be longer than the days.

Is a reflective dog leash bright enough?

Using a reflective dog leash is great, but as you can see in the video above, the funflector safety reflectors are brighter. Of course, it depends on what quality and how much reflective material the leash has, so test yours so you know. The brighter the reflectors the further away the drivers can see you. This is particularly important along streets with faster traffic. Our leash might be bright enough on a residential street with very slow traffic, but for a highway, we need more reflective power. We like to hang one reflector in each end of the leash for extra safety.

Red and black ninja safety reflector by funflector
The reflector hanging on the dog leash in the video is a ninja. Available here.

The dog walker needs to be seen too! We have plenty of reflectors hanging on our jacket zipper pulls, but that is of little use when it’s too warm for jackets. So this time of year, reflective slap wraps are the most practical solution. They only take a second to slap on and are easy to wear for walkers, runner and bicyclists.

The funflector team

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Glow Sticks or Safety Reflectors for Halloween?

/ reflector basics, traffic safety / , , ,

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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