Flight Time wrote:Fortunately, the guy underneath it is, well, underneath it. The bar in the guy's hands means absolutely nothing to non-kiters, be they boaters, aircraft pilots, swimmers, what have you. It especially means nothing to other kiters. The direction the kite is traveling in and whether the rider beneath it is on a collision course are the main points of focus. For me, taking that into consideration, I honestly don't think that I would notice if it was a color coded bar the guy was holding in his hands, or a lawn gnome.
That's not what I meant
Colour-coding as a visual identifier to others eg. lights on boats or planes, IS pointless on kite bars or lines; as you say, who can actually see it?
However, as it has been a convention for a while, my assumption is that as sailors were involved in the beginnings of the sport, or took it up, they carried over the same convention for left and right, out of convenience - colour-coding is for the user, the person setting up the bar and lines... with many people identifying red with left and green with right, why bother using other colours?
My other pointless point is that people don't connect the kite in the sky and the guy with the bar in his hands... and constantly clothes-line themselves as they insist on walking between the kite and the kiter.
So long as the colours for left and right are high-contrast to each other and the surroundings, it's all good. With all the brown, blues, greens, and greys around in the ocean, land, and sky, I think red is good option.
Big splash of white in the middle of black on the wrong side is still the best option in my opinion.