I think it probably is in good faith, but it’s still pushing responsibility onto other road users for driver error: implicitly the logic runs something like “I didn’t see them, but they weren’t wearing reflective spray so it’s their fault I hit them.” It’s a pernicious line of thinking that if you’re a regular cyclist you realise is everywhere in the discussion of road safety issues.

You see the same thing with helmets, which are designed to reduce (not eliminate) the impact of a cyclist falling from a standing (or riding) position to the ground, ie a 12mph impact, to the point where brain damage is less likely to occur. Thanks to the v² scaling of energy that has to be dissipated, even a 20mph impact exceeds the design limits of a cycle helmet to absorb impact energy by nearly a factor of 3 which means that helmets make little difference in direct collisions with vehicles travelling at normal traffic speeds. Yet I’ve seen cyclists called out for “not wearing a helmet” when they’ve been run over by a cement truck. Cyclists tend to be a tad hyper-sensitive to victim blaming as a result of this kind of thing!