Does reflective trim count as hi-vis for road riding?

The UK Highway Code asks riders to wear light-colored or fluorescent clothing in daylight and reflective clothing if they have to ride at night or in poor visibility. The British Horse Society (BHS) goes further and recommends hi-vis clothing and lights whenever you ride, whatever the time of day, season or weather.

This is a safety topic, so we are reporting what road-safety and riding bodies say, not telling you what will keep you safe. Most of the sources are British: the Highway Code, the BHS and a Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) report written for the BHS. Our one US source is the US Pony Club's safety booklet. None of them is a law for where you live. We looked for a minimum amount of reflective material that counts as hi-vis and did not find one, so a small reflective logo or a strip of piping is something to read the listing on, not assume.

If you are shopping, our riding jackets and vests are the place to start, and our safety vests page includes reflective vests as well as body protectors.

Horse & Hound puts it this way in its October 2025 hi-vis feature: hi-vis, or fluorescent, material works best in daylight, and reflective strips bounce light back to the source like headlights. Its advice is to combine bright hi-vis material and silver reflective elements.

The TRL report, prepared for the BHS in October 2017, says the same thing in research terms. It describes reflective materials as highly effective at night but reliant on falling within the throw of a vehicle's headlights. It adds that in early evening, if a driver has not yet switched headlights on, the reflective material is ineffective because the light levels are low and very little is reflected back, and that the same holds in good daylight. For daytime, the report reviewed studies of pedestrians and cyclists, which found that fluorescent materials improved detection in daytime, and flashing lights, lamps and retroreflective materials did so at night. It notes the quality of those studies was generally weak, and that very little research directly looks at horses.

Rule 50 says riders should wear light-colored or fluorescent clothing in daylight and reflective clothing if they have to ride at night or in poor visibility. Rule 51 says it is safer not to ride on the road at night or in poor visibility, but if you do, to wear reflective clothing, put reflective bands on the horse above the fetlock joints, and fit a light that shows white to the front and red to the rear to the rider's right arm and/or leg or boot. It strongly recommends a fluorescent or reflective tail guard for the horse. Those rules are phrased as advice, and Horse & Hound notes they are not legal requirements but are considered best practice.

Dusk is the hard one, and the sources are cautious about it. TRL's point about headlights means reflective gear has little to work with before drivers switch them on. The US Pony Club safety booklet (2017) says riding at dusk or by night should be avoided, that if you must, the cardinal rule is "be seen, be bright", meaning an effective light and reflective clothing, and that dusk is an especially dangerous time to be on the road. The BHS says it would not recommend going out at night or in poor visibility.

TRL recommends bright and reflective clothing covering as much of the rider and horse as possible, prioritizing width over height, and also on the legs to add what it calls biological motion cues, the movement of a walking horse's legs. It makes a placement point too: because dipped headlights point low, a rider's height is too high for a reflective vest to be optimally lit by them, and where twilight rides are common a lower placement such as leg bands would be better.

The BHS's stated minimum is a hi-vis jacket or tabard for the rider and leg bands on the horse. On quality, the BHS says many hi-vis garments now meet British standards, including EN 17353:2020, which is aimed at leisure riders, and that it recommends choosing clothing made to a recognized standard where possible. EN ISO 20471 (2013) is the standard it names for professional use, such as employer-issued kit, and it says accessories such as a hat band or harness should also meet EN 17353:2020. We have not read the standards themselves, so we cannot tell you what they require. What you can do is check whether a listing names one.

TRL's summary says there is no firm evidence that one color is more visible than another across multiple environments and suggests considering the dominant colors around you, such as foliage, crops and the backgrounds associated with sunsets. In its discussion it points out that large areas of bright yellow can surround roads at times of year because of oilseed rape or sunflower crops. The BHS gives the same example from the rider's side: at certain times of year you could blend into a hedgerow in certain colors.

TRL also describes a lab-style study in which drivers were shown images of a horse and rider and asked to say when they saw it. Response times for a fluorescent tabard and a black-and-white tabard were not significantly different from each other, and both were faster than for a dark tabard. TRL cautions that findings from images would not necessarily be repeated on a real road.

TRL's three recommendations in order are lower speed limits on roads with lots of riders, lights wherever feasible, and bright reflective clothing wherever feasible. For lights it suggests a pattern that shows width: two red LEDs on the rider's shoulders and two on the horse's flanks facing backward, with white LEDs facing forward for oncoming traffic. The BHS says the same, recommending LED lights wherever possible, ideally in a pattern that highlights width.

The survey evidence comes from the same research team at Duchy College in the UK, summarized in TRL's report and in US coverage at the time (Horse Illustrated, and The Horse in July 2013 for the first study). In two questionnaires of riders, 60.3% and 66.2% said they had had a near miss with traffic in the previous year. In both, there was no significant relationship between wearing fluorescent equipment and near misses, while riders wearing lights reported significantly fewer. Treat that carefully: both near misses and kit were self-reported, TRL says very little evidence directly addresses horses and collisions, and it still recommends reflective clothing based on evidence from other road users. It does not say hi-vis does nothing.

It says that if you must ride at dusk or after dark, the cardinal rule is "be seen, be bright", an effective light plus reflective clothing, and it says not to ask someone to follow you in a car, because headlights cast shadows that make it difficult to see and may spook the horse. We did not look at state or local road rules, and we did not find a USEF or other federation rule about road visibility, so we are not claiming there is none.

The practical overlap with the UK sources is large: avoid dusk and dark if you can, and if not, use lights and reflective clothing. Where they differ is wording. The Highway Code names fluorescent in daylight; the US Pony Club booklet names reflective clothing and a light for low light. For a longer look at what to wear over a winter coat, see our winter coat guide, and for body protection, our air vest or body protector page.

These are the questions the sources above point to, not a safety guarantee.

• Does it say fluorescent, reflective, or both? The sources describe them as different materials for different light and suggest combining them.
• Does it name a standard, such as EN 17353:2020 (the BHS says this is aimed at leisure riders)?
• Where is the reflective material: on the torso only, or also on arms, legs or horse bands (TRL talks about width and the legs)?
• Does it work with lights, or does it include them? The BHS and TRL recommend LED lights wherever possible.
• Is the color different from the places you ride (hedgerows, crops, sunset)?