Let's de-bunk the silver curse
 

Curse, schmersh. I believe there must be logical explanations for the so-called curse of the silver 8. My theories are below. Add your theories (serious or otherwise) to the thread.

I think a major factor in the number of accidents with silver 8's could be simple probablilities. I have seen previous posts of stats showing that silver is currently the most popular car color. If there are more silver cars on the road, it stands to reason that there will be more accidents involving silver cars. What would be telling is the normalized stats: i.e., if there are more accidents with silver cars per 1000 silver cars than for all colors.

I'm not sure what the color beakdown is for the 8. (Does anyone know?) If there are more silver 8's on the road than the other colors, they will likely show up in more accidents just by probability.

Also as RPIRX-8 pointed out eariler in this thread, the visibility of the color can be a contributing factor. I had some very close calls in my black '89 RX-7 convertible (especially with the top down). I eventually took to driving with the lights on all the time to increase visibility (even though it hurt the look of the care - better ugly than dead). Silver may blend in with the backgroud of the color of the road, etc.

I remember an old MBZ safety study that indicated that white and yellow are the most visible car colors - white for it's brightness/contrast and yellow because it is at the peak of the color receptivity of the human eye. (So, maybe those folks driving the yellow 8's are on to something...)

Add your own thoughts,

Cheers!
Bob

you can deny it all you want but the curse is real!! :)



Suncursed Silver and Titanium (french for silver) cars are cursed!!

I totally agree with you sponge and let me add to this by pointing out a recent thread.. :rolleyes:

https://www.rx8club.com/rx-8-multimedia-photo-gallery-6/i-guess-curse-silver-strikes-again-65556/

I think this will be a good topic to flesh out. I really think visibility must have something to do with it. Especially if you are in a silver car and all the cars around you are more vibrant colors (red, blue, yellow).

From what I've seen in New England, Silver and Titanium Grey are the most popular colors. Blue seems to be the least popular. I see an even number of reds, yellows, blacks around. I'm not going to weigh in on Whites and Shinkas for awhile due to their just recent availability.

Now from an insurance perspective, this would be interesting. I wonder if we can get insurance stats for this? I remember when I bought my car, if I had gotten red, my insurance would have been $300 more per year. Has anyone gotten an insurance quote lately for silver vs. any other color?

Maybe this might lead to some change at Mazda or other car companies. Maybe changing the shade of the silver to make it more visible?

Silver is hard to see.

Mu ha ha............................... you've been cursed.

I agree. I almost pulled out in front of a silver Jetta last week. Scared the crap out of me. Of course my eyes are getting worse, but the curse theory is much more interesting than statistics and camouflage.

Thanks BrotherVoodoo. The thread you referenced was the one that spurred me to start this one. My education is in the sciences (biochemistry) and, while I'm happy to respect differing opinions, I'm far more swayed by reason and data.

That thread is an interesting example. The dude was rear ended by an SUV. So, I don't think it was an issue of visibility. Just a matter of probability that the 8 was silver. Again, I'd love to know the break out of the various colors of the 8's manf. to date.

With regard to visibility: My Nordgic green is almost black, so I have a habit of turning on my headlights whenever I drive - day or night. Again, I learned from the close calls in my black '89.

My Honda Pilot is silver, so I guess we'll have to see how that fares. ;) No accidents so far in 1.5 years and 22,000 miles.

Bob

The silver colour together with the shape of the RX8 combines to make it more stealthy then other colours in the RX8 RANGE i believe they are harder to see as they blend in to the tarmac .

MY 2 CENTS WORTH

B...Free
michael

There are insurance company studies that show silver is one of the safest colours for cars. It just happens to be fact that the silver RX-8 has a fair dinkum curse on it, that's all :).

No.... its been clearly shown that yellow is rated the safest colour, in fact all over Europe insurance companies give larger discounts to drivers of yellow cars as per usuall we here in Australia will be the last to know .

B...Free
michael

Silver is just more difficult to see than many colors. Tit Grey I personally find even harder to see as It blends perfectly in with the color of both the asphalt in many places as well as an overcast sky.

And while it is true that other, 'brighter' colors have a higher penchant for accidents, it has to do with the types of cars in those colors. Silver is the single most popular car color and is used for just about everything, but particularly your average econo-boxes. Yellows and Reds (particularly Yellows) are used on many types but are in higher concentrations in the range of faster cars that just have a higher likelihood of being in an accident. So, while the owner of a Yellow car probably has a far higher chance of being in an accident that they caused, they probably have significantly lesser chances being in an accident caused by someone's inattentiveness than, say, a Silver car.

Now, for color breakdown I don't know what total production numbers are, but I can tell you the color breakdown for the local area here using the 250 RX-8s on dealer lots right now. I can only presume that the DFW area gets a representative sample of colors and that they number of each color still available is representative of the production numbers (this part may not be true as the colors left now may be left due to low demand -- like Black with Black/Red interior for example which is impossible to find)

Out of the 250 RX-8s in the area, 51 are Red, 44 are Gray, 43 are Silver, 38 are Black, 38 are White, 16 are Blue, 9 are Green, and 9 are Cherry.

wow.. this blows everyones theories out of the water..


http://channels.netscape.com/ns/auto...color/carcolor

..except mine.... :)

My thoery is the government is being forced to cause this, by evil aliens from mars. They're trying to kill us...slowly...
________
Michagan marijuana dispensary

mu ha ha.....
you've been cursed again!

I disagree. The article was general in nature, this thread is about a curse with respect to the Silver RX-8. There could be a Blue 350Z curse as well, maybe others. :rolleyes:

The Sunlight Silver curse stays until I say otherwise... http://home.comcast.net/~store0001/emoticon/Demon.gif rotten42 has dibs on the "french" curse ... http://home.comcast.net/~store0001/emoticon/skull.gif

Nice find!

I'm all for de-bunking this curse Sponge Bob.

Well, everyone so far seems to think that an accident can only happen because your car is not a visible color. Well, news flash... you can cause the accident too. The RX-8 that I trashed had nothing to do with visibility or color but had more to do with a short circuit between the ears. :o

Actually I see more other colors than I do Silver's on there road. I too would like to see a breakdown of the color of RX-8s sold.

"DE-BUNK THE CURSE!"

(knocks on wood)

well I have been lame tonight.. meaning that I used all my fireworks up. so I did a search and found BrotherVoodoo's Gallery of Macabre RX-8

http://home.comcast.net/~store0001/macabre

Well I counted them up to the best of my ability (not counting multiple pics of the same car) and with some tough shots (aka is it green or black??)
and here is the breakdown

Yellow: 5
Red: 19
Blue: 4
Silver: 20
Titanium: 15
Green: 2
Black: 17
White: 1
Blazing inferno: 1


Well its not scientific but brotherVoodoo seemed to have a good repository of most the crash pictures I could find.

let the debate continue.. not that I have a vested interest with my silver RX-8!!!

I think that the theory that there are more silvers out there is partially correct (more cars more crashes). But I still believe that it's a visibility issue (same with grey). In my driving experiece, I have found myself doing doubletakes on silver cars to make sure that they are there on overcast days. Lucky we have daylight running lights here so that does definitely helps with the visibility.

As it stands, I still believe in the curse!

Hey, Rotten? A-hahahahahahahahaha!!!!
Titanium "French" for silver, my arse!
I keep telling you, titanium is French for awesomely coloured car!

Great posts, all.

I checked the NHTSA web site and they had nothing relating accidents and car colors. Regarding probabilites, the most accurate stats would be normalized by millions of road miles per color classification.

I sent an e-mail to Mazda USA asking for color breakdown info. We'll see if they come through.

The Rueters piece was intersting, but was a study in New Zealand. Perhaps the effect of car color on accidents is the opposite in the Southern Hemisphere - like the vortex in the toilet going counter clockwise. ;) Thus making silver cars SAFER in the down under.

Happy forth.

Bob

the study was also on accidents causing serious injury - which is a relatively small chunk of total accidents

What this tells me is that If there are more silvers sold than others then percentage wise there are probably more accidents with Reds since they are close to the same number of accidents. I've read about many accidents on this forum that are not included on BrotherVoodoo's collection of macabre.

I did a count and my results was considerably different. I did not count anything that was questionable of color, storm damage, duplicates or race events.

Yellow: 3
Red: 16
Blue: 4
Silver: 16
Titanium: 14
Green: 1
Black: 14

I thought argent was French for "silver"?