Simon & Garfunkel wrote, "...a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."

I suspect that when we see a car pull out in front of us, nearly hitting us, and the driver then sees us and is truly apologetic, that there is obviously something psychological, latent and unaddressed, at work here.

Can we go deeper into the psychology of motorists "not seeing" cyclists? It seems to me that this phenomenon needs to be examined, perhaps through deep hypnosis, to find out some of the underlying reasons why some drivers (too many drivers) somehow find it necessary to exclude cyclists from their consciousness.

Once we know the inner dynamics of this, we can set about creating public service messages that rectify the errant beliefs, emotions and thoughts that can cause a person in full-view, in broad daylight, to be "invisible" to some drivers.

This seems to me a valid study that colleges and universities could afford to conduct. Freud had a great deal to say on the "psychology of errors", and I'm sure that contemporary psychologists have sought to understand glaring and selective inconsistencies in people's observational skills. Perhaps expectation plays a role in it. There also might be a certain element of subconscious derision or apathy directed to us, as a group.

While I feel that hypnosis could be a major way of elucidating the inner dynamics of abnormal or harmful errors in either omission of commission, the methods need be chosen by the experts.

1.) Have any formal studies or published research ever taken-place that have dealt specifically with the phenomenon of motorists "not seeing" cyclists and 2.) Would it be promising to petition schools of psychology to initiate and conduct such research?