I have an OSHA-compliant yellow reflective jacket. We have a love hate relationship.

I take a bus and train to university, Monday through Friday, and really enjoy it. One of the benefits is a regular walk every day. In the winter months however, it is dark and cold. After several close calls with drivers not paying attention, I decided to get a bright-colored coat to solve both those issues.

I ended up with a work jacket from Ergodyne off of Amazon. It’s technically lime green, but it’s so bright as to be a florescent yellow. Black on the cuffs and gut, and made of heavy polyester, it’s built to handle abrasion and hide dirt. The arms and torso are banded in retro reflective tape, compliant with the American National Standard for high-visibility apparel. A built-in hood tucks away into a tall, fleece lined collar and a high-waisted design keeps my legs unencumbered and prevents the coat from riding up when I sit down. There’s an inside chest pocket, which is always a favorite and a couple pen holders on the left sleeve I use to hold a small flashlight.

I will be the first to admit that I went with the nuclear option. For my desk-bound engineering student lifestyle, it’s overkill. My boots are, or should be, polished and my button up shirt, popular amongst the engineers I aspire to join, stays tucked in. There is no dirt for the jacket to hide and it’s never abraded against anything rougher than backpack straps and bus interiors. For reasons I don’t fully understand, I love it anyway.

Maybe it’s because my favorite color is yellow. Maybe it’s my interest in spaces that really do require such attire. Maybe it’s because it hits a good balance of just warm enough to take off the edge without smothering me on my morning and evening commute. Maybe it’s the small hope that the vehicle behind me can definitely see me in the cross walk and won’t take that left turn too early.

However, once I get to campus, the context changes. My favorite jacket is suddenly an eye sore and point of conversation. Eyes unseen seem to follow me everywhere. I find myself constantly justifying to myself the necessity of the jacket, repeating in my mind it’s value and purpose. This is both exhausting and makes me question if my reasons are still valid.

I bought my yellow jacket over a year ago. At the time, my morning walk was thirty minutes along an unlit residential street and crossed a four-lane arterial road. SUV’s, with their large blind spots, always looked to the left for oncoming traffic when turning right, and never to the right at the one crosswalk for the intersection. Vehicles pulling out of side streets and driveways never seemed to double check for the one pedestrian around that hour of the day. At the time, the nuclear option felt well deserved.

After I moved, the bus stop was closer and the streets were calmer. My mantra that the eye sore was necessary seemed to hold less and less weight. I loved the cut and shape of the jacket so much, I bought one in black with more subdued striping around the same time I bought the yellow one. It was intended for daytime use, or when playing frogger in the crosswalk wasn’t anticipated. Maybe my context had changed enough I could put down my yellow jacket.

I tried my black jacket last week for three days. On the third day, a car took a right on green, not noticing that the pedestrian light was also on. I had to scramble back to the street corner to avoid being run over. The guy didn’t even slow down. I happened to forget my phone that morning and hadn’t noticed until I got to the bus stop. When I went home to get it, I went right back to the yellow jacket. Arriving at that same cross walk, a different truck now turning left, waited patiently as I walked across.

I can’t say with certainty that I am safer with the yellow jacket and there is certainly a heavy amount of confirmation bias going on in my analysis. Personal protective equipment is also meant to be the last line of defense. Safety starts with avoiding the problems to begin with which is why I am such a stickler for crosswalks (accoring to a county homicide investigator at Utah’s 2024 transportation conference, over 70% of pedestrian-vehicle collisions are the fault of the pedestrian. Often, this is due to jay walking which itself is related to insufficient cross walks) But I feel safer. My mind is less anxious when I find myself lit up by headlights and vehicles seem to give me more space and slow down sooner than they usually do. That peace of mind while I walk in the dark is valuable.

I would really like to see more street lighting and a cultural shift away from prioritizing cars over everyone else. The fact that I even felt the need to purchase and use industrial safety equipment just to walk my neighborhood feels wrong. This is why I am studying civil engineering. But those changes will take time and a supportive public. If the social impact really bothers me, maybe I’ll get an in-office jacket I can wear around campus and the lab once I arrive. For now, I’m sticking with my yellow jacket.