Originally Posted by
genejockey
Though, to be honest, almost every pothole I've ever hit was one I did NOT see.
This.
Whatever target fixation is, I appear to be immune to it. Two times I've wiped out on hills, one was in SF where the street repairs didn't bother to raise the manhole cover back up to the surface of the repaved road. Turns out that it's actually hard to discern the level of a black manhole cover in a blacktop road from higher in the slope going 30+ mph. I flew over the handlebars and somehow actually landed on grass in a crowded city. The other time was when I discovered that whatever it was the state of Massachusetts was using to patch blacktop can cause your wheel to go out sideways from under you at speed. I got some road rash from that. Those patches are actually hard to discern at anything other than a short distance, so I'm not agreeing entirely with this don't watch the road immediately ahead of you. I actually scan between close and distant to be sure I haven't missed anything when I decided my line.