I was this close to linking to another article on this topic a couple days ago, but I trusted Mikael Colville-Andersen to drive the point home much better than I ever could:

The latest piece in our ongoing Car Industry Strikes Back series writes itself. This time it’s Volvo doing its best to draw your attention to the fact that motorists kill obscene amounts of people - including themselves - by placing the responsibility on cyclists and pedestrians. It’s a smoke screen and this time it’s sprayed on. It is Ignoring the Bull in Society’s China Shop taken to the next level.

Volvo Life Paint. Seriously. Life paint.

But hey… it’s not for the 35,000+ people killed by or in cars in the EU alone by Volvo and their Big Auto homies (around the same in the US and 1.2 million worldwide - not to mention the tenfold more killed by pollution from cars and trucks or the hundreds and hundreds of thousands more injured…).

And no, it’s not rational ideas like helmets for motorists or making motorists responsible by forcing them to have external airbags.

It’s spray on paint.

The worst part is that I’ve already seen plenty of cyclists that are actually happy this product exists. I mean, how ridiculous is this? A car manufacturer developing — and selling — a special reflective paint for cyclists to spray on themselves — all with the noble goal of not getting themselves killed by the very cars Volvo makes.

Disgusting.

UPDATE: There’s a follow-up article on Copenhagenize.com. They’ve created a petition on Change.org to get Volvo to offer free Life Paint for every Volvo car on the roads today. I just signed it.