To the editor:

An ’80s movie series gave us Darth Vader.

Now 30 years later, we have his tribe on island including “Vaderettes” in haut-color backpacks. They’re on foot or headed to the ferry. They’re stylish in blacks, tans, or earthen tones. “Yellow” is not their color.

As motorists we don’t see them readily through the shadows and our slant-light windshields. They don’t get it since they see us. As the Long Dark descends we’re headed for a stylish collision or three. And in our blacks and browns, too, we’re not much help to medics in their blues and fluorescents.

A three-column San Diego Union-Tribune story of July 16, 2006, got us a West Coast biker mecca repute. The Chilly Hilly events added to our lusterless doing it wearing folksy hues. Maybe the hint of a pack-hidden yellow patch. The fact we gained incautious road travelers without Northwest light savvy is no surprise. I once nearly collided with a professional couple wearing all black crossing Winslow Way except his white socks looked like two rabbits in the mist.

For about a third the costs of a medics’ transport, we could insist on them wearing a modest two-direction light. They could fix them on their Raider-black ball caps or somewhere above the faded magenta socks our micro-Vader commuters seem to like.

Their survivors and families ought to insist too before they send them out to be or play in traffic.

R.O. CONOLEY

Sunrise Drive