Feeling invisible on the road can be scary, especially for cyclists at night who are at the mercy of drivers’ short attention spans.
Volvo, that Swedish car manufacturing giant, is rolling out testing for a product they’ve dubbed “LifePaint,” a glow-in-the-dark safety spray which boasts the tagline of “The best way to survive a crash is not to crash.”
LifePaint was built off some significant consumer insight. The spray can be applied to nearly any surface, including clothes, shoes, backpacks, helmets, and, of course, bicycles. The coating is transparent and can be washed off without damaging the underlying material. One application can last up to a week, at which point a fresh coat should be reapplied.
LifePaint also does away with the unattractive glow-in-the-dark neon green that, until now, has long been associated with luminescent products and alien slime. A coating of LifePaint shines in an illuminating arctic white under car headlights.
“When you apply it to a surface, the reflective particles will stick together with a special adhesive, making the spray invisible by day but lights up at night in the glare of headlights,” explained Anders Wellving in the product video.
Historically, Volvo has proven itself to be a champion of traffic safety, and teamed up with creative agency Grey London and reflective paint makers Albedo 100 to create LifePaint. “Volvo has always taken safety seriously,” said Grey London on the product page. “They invented the three-point seat belt in 1959 and then opened up the patent so that any car manufacturer could use it. Now they’re giving away a product to take Volvo safety beyond its cars.”
Product trials began on March 27th in six U.K. bike shops, but whether it will hit American shelves any time soon depends entirely on the success of the product and what the demand looks like.
“I think you just got to be as visible as you can, and that’s the good thing about LifePaint. It makes it very hard for you to be missed,” said one supporter of the product in the video.
