I think victim blaming is the problem here.

The idea behind the typical Amish perspective on technology is to preserve community. Exceptions are sometimes made as necessary or reasonable, washing machines being one of the most popular exceptions. It seems to be working well for them.

No. I live in PA, and we have a similar law. I remember before it was passed, and seeing buggies with just the reflectors.

Close up, directly in front of lights, you can see reflectors fine, but your lights aren't always pointing at them. Maybe it's a curve or a hill, maybe they are approaching an intersection, but flashing lights can be seen from all angles.

Also, most Amish have no problem using modern technology when required. It's not like a pathological fear, it's a religious devotion to self-reliance. They use cell phones and power tools when they need to, and they hire "English" (non-Amish) to drive them in cars. Some are more insular than others, and they rarely get involved in politics, so they mostly just do whatever is required.

The Amish actually do use technology, but they can't use it unless there's no other alternative, for example word processing.

Also, they tend to use Linux.

They already use those. This goes a lot deeper than "buggies are hard to see" and gets into governmentally preferred classes. Requiring the Amish switch from reflectors to lights is an act of both victim blaming and attempted cultural erasure

See halfsack's comment. To elaborate on that point, actually good & competent drivers have many responsibilities. Among them is to see....and be seen.

As others have said, a lot of these buggies are all black. And they're puttering around the road, on a dark nights, well under established speed limits. 2 vehicles traveling at very different speeds, the slow one is hard to see. That's just begging for an accident.

At least where I live, it is technically illegal to drive without headlights on when it's raining. If windshield wipers are required, so are headlights. This is to bolster visibility in poor weather conditions. Also just headlights in general, you can get pulled over & ticketed for driving at night without headlights. Why should the Amish be a dangerous exception to the rules of the road??

This alone: Roads funded by taxpayers, which IIRC the Amish are largely tax-exempt. Thus: if they wish to travel on our roads, they need to abide by our rules & not make the roads more dangerous.

To be slightly more accommodating to Luddites, we could put hi-vis reflective tape on the buggies. But again as others have said, the Amish have all kinds of workarounds/exceptions/justifications to get what they want. They have mobile phones. Some have snowmobiles. They have generators, so they're not "tied into the worldly grid" but they generate & use electricity. So maybe they can get used to the idea of battery-powered lights on their buggies, for visibility.

That's the general idea, but life's not that black and white. It's better if both parties contribute to avoiding collisions. It's the same reason why I'm required to have brake lights and hazard lights on my car.

Absolutely, I still don't ride my bike on the freeway, and I still check both ways before crossing roads, even when there is a crosswalk.

Sometimes reality is at odds with our idealistic views.

I'm from an area where this can be a problem. In my experience it's pretty easy to see the buggys during the day, but at night on an unlit state road even with good head lights they can be hard to see until you are practically right on top of them.

Yeah, fuck cars, but it's just kinda a crap situation in general.

Man, fuck Ohio

Clevelander here.

........yeah.

I believe they were already required to use reflectors. Back in the 80's when I was sometimes in Ohio with my parents we used to pass Amish buggies sometimes, and they always had an orange triangle retroreflector thing on the back.