First let me state that I don’t like white as a car color. Second, I agree that white and silver blend in in a fog, snow or on a light-colored road surface. Third, I posted this because I’m in the market for a car after not having needed one for a few years. I’ve driven consistently throughout (almost 20 years total) with no accidents. I came across these links and excerpts below and was curious to see what people have to say. Note the stats on the colors. They are pretty much consistent.
“study of 31,000 crashes in Sweden1 found that black cars were involved in 22.5% of the crashes even though black cars made up only 4.4% of the vehicle population. This means that black cars were 5 times more likely to crash.”
AND
“Daimler-Benz undertook research (before flourescent paints were used) that concluded that white was the easiest colour to be seen. White rated 86% in their tests while black, dark red and dark blue rated 4%.”
"The visibility of cars depends on the weather, road conditions the landscape and the time of day. Generally bright and brilliant colours are much better than dark colours because they reflect a lot more light and can be seen from up to four times the distance of vehicles painted a dark colour. The US National Safety Council defined the safest colour as “one that is highly visible in the widest range of lighting, weather and vision conditions"2 The Safety Council noted that white is the most visible colour in uniform lighting, but it has low visibility on a light coloured road in bright sunlight and in snow and fog.”
“A University of California study3 found that the colour of an approaching car influences the driver?s judgement about how far away it is. Blue and yellow made distant objects seem closest. The grey shades made objects seem further away.”
The above were from:
http://www.ltsa.govt.nz/fascinating-facts/safe-vehicle-colours.html
More:
"A team of New Zealand epidemiologists has recently published a two-year study of crash data compiled in their homeland, and the results say occupants of silver cars are less likely to be involved in injury accidents than those riding in cars of another color. And while they seem steadfast that the results of the study are accurate, the most vexing thing is they can’t figure out why.
Before you cry out, “People who buy silver cars must be safer drivers than those who buy red or purple cars!” you should know that the researchers made every effort to screen for anything that might skew survey results. Thus the results were adjusted for age, sex, alcohol level (three of our favorite adjustment factors), education, use of drugs, seatbelt use, driver’s license status, and even the average time spent behind the wheel. In addition to the human factors, the study also tried to screen out vehicle-related factors like age, engine size, and condition. And, finally, the research team tried to eliminate other wild cards such as weather, road conditions, and light variables (daylight, dusk, and nighttime.)
silver carWhen all this was fed into the giant analysis computer, the British Medical Journal reported, silver cars were 60 percent less likely to be involved in a serious injury than the control group–white cars. Even when the adjustments for confounding variables were removed from the data, silver cars were still 50 percent less likely to be involved in a serious injury accident than white.
If silver is safest, what are the least safe? Dark earth tones. Brown vehicles were 110 percent more likely to be involved in an injury accident than white cars, when the adjustment factors were taken into account. Black was almost equally bad at 100 percent more likely and green cars were 80 percent more likely.
So if dark colors are unsafe, you might figure that bright colors like yellow and red would be safer because they are more likely to be seen. Well, yes and no. On unadjusted bases, both red and yellow vehicles were viewed as much more likely to be involved in injury accidents, but when adjusted for all the other variables, they actually registered as being safer than the control color of white."
This was from http://www.drivers.com/article/707/
There’s more but they pretty much say the same things.