Pedestrians should wear high-vis in urban areas, even on the edge of Dublin City Centre, according to the Assistant Garda Commissioner for roads policing and community engagement.Comment & Analysis: Up to now, when Irish authorities have talked about people walking wearing high-vis clothing, people have brushed it off and dismissed that they mean in urban areas too. But their advice has generalised for a long time. Thanks to TheJournal, its as clear as day that some senior people involved in road safety in Ireland really believe this amounts to good road safety advice.At the October Bank Holiday road safety appeal at Garda headquarters, both Minister for State Sen Canney, whos responsible for road safety, and Denis Ferry, an assistant Garda commissioner. made the call for people walking to wear high-vis.Now, the phrase walking can be ambiguous; it could just mean going for a walk for exercise. But The Journal asked if it would include pedestrians in suburban areas, and Ferry unambiguously responded: All pedestrians.The reporter probed further, asking whether the advice included the nearby North Circular Road. According to The Journal, Ferry said: I think you should do everything you can to ensure youre visible Even though youre in an urban setting, quite often what we find is that when you go to cross the road, you assume that the traffic coming towards you can see you. Quite often in an urban setting, with lighting, its actually more difficult. Wed recommend, where possible, some sort of high-visibility, an armband if not even a jacket. Minister Canney told reporters that he agreed. Although known for regularly putting his foot in it, Canney tempered his remarks with a line about shadow in the public lighting and said the advice was even more important for rural areas.The problem is that lines like doing everything you can to ensure youre visible sound great in theory, but what does it mean in practice when it includes all pedestrians, including in urban areas?All pedestrians means people walking to work, to the shop, going to the cinema, for a meal, or for a night out, or going to a friends house. And, of course, all bus passengers are all pedestrians at some point.The same goes for most car users across the country. In fact, some of the people I observe most erratically crossing the road are people going to and from cars (crossing without looking, crossing away from a crossing even when theres a zebra crossing within a few metres, etc).At what point do we all have to wear high-vis everywhere because motorists wont slow down and streets are designed around cars? Should politicians lead by example and wear high-vis clothing everywhere? Should business suits include high-vis elements? Im not being serious, but thats where the logic goes.Well, no, its not really. Because nobody is really thinking about the consequences of trying to maintain that high-vis should be worn everywhere by pedestrians. And this is before we even get to the effectiveness of high-vis. Theres little in the way of solid evidence to suggest that high-vis lowers the number of people getting run over. As covered here before, a lot claimed visibility issues are actually failure to observe incidents where motorists dont look, look but dont see, or are looking at their phones or are otherwise distracted. The other problem is that the State is not doing everything it can to make roads safer; the State collectively is so far away from doing everything it can that a bit of victim blaming is a nice distraction.