In all seriousness, I support this safety measure:
Women touting for customers on a rural highway outside Els Alamus near Lleida in Catalonia have been told to don the yellow fluorescent bibs or pay fines of 40 euros (£36) under road traffic laws.
Police claim the sex workers on the LL-11 road are not being specifically targeted because of what they do but because they posed a danger to drivers.
Also too though: nanny statism! At least in America, we’re still free.
(h/t Bill E Pilgrim)
Bill E Pilgrim
Oh. Never mind. Well-attributed, old tamale. You’re a gentleman and a scholar.
DougJ
@Bill E Pilgrim:
It’s a good story.
Jon H
Why not allow some leeway: dayglo yellow miniskirts, thongs, fishnets, bikini and halter tops.
It should be a requirement of some number of square centimeters of dayglo yellow, apportioned however the person wishes.
Bill E Pilgrim
@DougJ: I was actually almost going to Barcelona last week, maybe a good thing I didn’t. Imagine getting confused and thinking you were just following a detour. Wait, officer, she waved me off the road, and I thought…. d’oh!
Violet
Really figured you’d go with the classic “Tie a yellow ribbon round the…”
Martin
So, they’re trying to encourage the drivers to look at the hookers as they go down the highway?
Why not give them a cellphone and a mojito while they’re at it?
DougJ
@Violet:
That would have been better.
Bill E Pilgrim
Do you think they also make them hold up “Stop” and “Proceed, with Caution” signs?
Punchy
They pose a danger to the drivers’ wives, methinks.
MikeJ
@Bill E Pilgrim: Not, Stop! In the name of love?
Bill E Pilgrim
@MikeJ: Or maybe a “Green Balloon Juice!” sign.
Brian S (formerly Incertus)
If I recall correctly, they did something similar down here in south Florida many years ago for the people hawking papers and hot dogs and such on the road side, for precisely the same reason–too many car accidents.
On a side note, I just want to say I can’t wait for the days either when we have cars which drive themselves or when cars are so expensive that no one can afford them and we have reasonable public transportation systems, because I’ve become convinced that humans are too easily distracted to be allowed to control vehicles the size of cars.
MattR
@Brian S (formerly Incertus):
I think it is kinda analgous to the recent debate about concussions in the NFL. Technolgical improvements to safety in both cars and football helmets/pads have given the occupants a sense of security that causes them to behave in ways they didn’t 20 years ago. Car accidents and head to head collisions are still potentially harmful, but since they usually aren’t as devastating as they used to be there is not the same level of healthy fear.
FFrank
I cannot wait until this becomes a fashion statement with florescent Minis, thongs and Bra’s.
Picturing the cast of the Jersey Shore sponsoring a line of this clothing.
I can picture this as a line of clubwear, showing that you are not hard to get.
The headlines will write themselves.
Davis X. Machina
Forward into the past.
I believe it was under the late Republic that the honest matrons of Rome, tired of being accosted while doing the shopping as if they were common scorta, pressed for a law that all street-walking prostitutes wear the toga muliebris. Cicero alludes to it in one of the Phillipics, IIRC.
Tsulagi
Got some love for some latin countries and how they handle their religious wingnuts.
From the link, apparently in Spain prostitution is legal and okay if the hookers wear reflective vests while out for a stroll. In the SO’s very Catholic home country, Argentina, recently a bill legalizing same-sex marriage was pushed through their Senate in the face of a family values wingnut filibuster. Then their fairly hot woman president signed it telling the nuts to shove it. How anti-Democratic of her and their senators.
Yeah, we’re so advanced.
Alex S.
Some things should remain in the dark… and light doesn’t always enhance the experience.
El Cruzado
@MattR: I am not a sociologist, but I’d bet in the case of driving more reckless driving is going to be more related to the fact that cars are better now (better built, more stable at high speeds etc.) than to the fact they have more airbags and whatnot.
Crashing is scary no matter what, and it’s expensive as hell. The percent of desperadoes is probably about the same now as before, they just run faster because their cars allow them too.
Also, consider that despite everything there are far less fatalities now in terms of miles driven than a few decades ago.
gnomedad
Yellow? Not red?
MattR
@El Cruzado: Good point, though I think my analogy can still be altered to work.
catclub
@MattR:
“s have given the occupants a sense of security that causes them to behave in ways they didn’t 20 years ago”
Do your google search on ‘Homeostasis of risk’;
an interesting web book appears.
Brian S (formerly Incertus)
@El Cruzado: It seems to me that the issue is that we’re being bombarded with too many stimuli to be able to focus. What really convinced me was the study that came out recently which suggested that a passenger talking on the phone increases the risk of an accident because the driver is trying to figure out what’s going on in the other half of the conversation (believe I read it on the Wired blog). If we’re that susceptible to distraction, it’s amazing that we don’t kill ourselves more often.
Norman Rogers
There’s a new rule here in Europe–you have to have your reflective vest on when your expensive automobile is kaput and this is so that, when you get out of your car and walk around, aimlessly, trying to find a cell signal so that you can call ADAC and haggle in German with someone who only speaks Italian, the lorry that crashes into your stalled $80,000euro vehicle will have the chance to swerve to the left and only take out several other vehicles while avoiding you.
Now, if this happens to me in Spain, will I remember NOT to put on my reflective vest? If I put on the vest, and stand by my car, will I be propositioned? What will happen to my good name then?
This would not work in Austria. There, ALL of the occupants of the vehicle now have to wear their own individual vest.
BUT, let’s remember–the reflective triangle should mitigate the confusion. I know. Famous last words, right?
Thoroughly Pizzled
You know who else forced stigmatized members of society to wear yellow?
Brick Oven Bill
The bibs go a long way in keeping the semen off their blouses.