[Niles H.]

'Target fixation' is a term that is used sometimes.

A pilot (or a driver, or a cyclist) sees something ahead and thinks 'Oh no, look at that!' and fixes attention on the object.

There are some variations.

Here's an article: http://www.visualexpert.com/Resources/motheffect.html

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[pj7]

This pops up a couple of times a year on here. Usually the discussion is about a cyclist being hit because the motorist was looking at them too intently and drifted into them. And I agree with it to only a minor extent. I agree that if you stare at something you tend to move that way. In mountain biking there is an old addage, "look at the spaces between the rocks, not at the rocks themselves." This helps you navigate your bicycle to where it needs to go. And it works!
But I have done my own pseudo-tests while riding. If I stare at a light pole from 100 yards away and keep pedaling, I never hit the pole... I'm not that stupid. I do drift towards it, but not enough for me to actually run into it. I've even tried doing this while driving (the rare ocasion that I do drive) and have found the same thing. While I will drift towards what I am looking at, I never hit it.
I wouldn't really call it a "moth effect" either. A moth runs into the light not because of stupidity or because it is hyptomized, but because it doesn't know any better. It's not like they are taught that lights are actually solid objects. I would tend to refer to it as a person heads in the direction that they are looking because it makes more sense to do so.

[Niles H.]

In one variation, there is the thought (or assumption or autosuggestion) (or fear) that one is about to collide with something.

It's related to the thinking by some psychologists related to fears -- that some fears are actualized because one is strongly fixed on their actualization.

It's not exactly being drawn to something because of attraction, but so focused on something, and perhaps also so convinced that it is going to happen, that the actions proceed as conceived.

[NoNaYet]

Last year I encountered an SUV stopped in the on-coming left turn position whose driver laid on his horn for a long steady time. This scared the doo-doo out of me and fixed my attention so solidly on the car that I did not see the deer he was apparently honking at until it was almost on me at 100 mph and jumped over me, MTB and all.

[RomSpaceKnight]

I've hit many a tree root or rock from fixation. Look where you want to go. Visualize success. And lots of other yada yadas.

[noisebeam]

Here is the most common I see daily:

Someone mentions a cyclist-motorist interaction, then 'wrong way' then 'dangerous' then 'vehicular' and the swarm of moths builds and attacks. Stop, try to look away, but its too late.

Al

[ChipSeal]

LOL Al!
Also, thanks for posting vids on YouTube!
ChipSeal aka ddallass

[rschleicher]

The story above about the deer reminds me of a corporate training film I saw years ago about "paradigm shifts". In this one scene, a guy is driving a little sports car on a winding road, through a rural farm area. As he is driving along, he sees another car pulled off to the side, with a woman standing next to it. As he is passing this other car, the woman yells out, "Pig!"

He thinks to himself, "How dare she call me a pig! I didn't do anything to her!" Then he rounds the next corner and runs right into a pig standing in the middle of the road.

I guess the basic moral was to not fixate too much on your initial interpretation of something, so that it blinds you to other possibilities. For some goofy reason I don't remember anything else from this training film - just the pig story.