Excellent Piece on Seeing and Being Seen
 

Great article with a lot of food for thought, thanks for the link. The way aviators are trained has always seemed to be more effective to me, situational awareness should be promoted and taught more. I agree with pretty much his entire thesis.

Bill

It is a thought provoking article. Should we be "training" drivers in different ways? Should motor vehicles be absent things that add distractions (e.g., radios, phones, cup holders, etc.)? Should cyclist be required to use flashing lights when on public roadways? Is there a market for high contrast cycling clothing for the full range of cyclists (e.g., recreational riders, commuters, utility, etc.)? Is there a technology that can be installed in motor vehicles that can recognize cyclist, pedestrians, etc. and alert the driver?

Great article! Thanks for the link!

- Wil

I very much like this article and often post it as a reference.

In the daytime, I ride with front and rear flashing lights. I find that I get more respect from cars (they don't pass quite as close and are less likely to pull out ahead of me).

In addition to being lit up, I ride a recumbent. So I really stand out on the road. The friend I ride with most often doesn't use lights and doesn't ride "a clown bike" (my wife's words). We do joke that they'll be so absorbed by looking at me that they'll not see him at all.

No matter what you do, there will always be risks. Do what you can to minimize them and enjoy the ride.

Yes.

Yes, with modifications.

Maybe (lots of argument about flashing versus steady. I use steady lights, even during the day).

YES!

Yes, but it'll be too expensive.

But every idea on that list is a good one.

Pretty much exactly describes what I've tried to develop over the years. Intersection: left, far-left, right, far-right, far-left, right, left, go.
I would also note this would be opposite in UK based on the whole wrong side thingy- and I have trouble reversing it when I have driven in UK.

Always look around the A-pillars. Always look directly at your target spot as you move into it.

It also points out my problem with transitioning lenses and their weird correction maps. I hate them. Reminds me of a fun house mirror and totally messes up the above scan steps -for me anyway.

I have also observed I am much more diligent about this on a bike.

Typical British article.....All the facts and nothing but the facts.

Thanks for sharing.

My daily commuter/errand bike used to be an upside-down bike. This requires a bit of explanation: Take a bike, in this case a discarded step-through bike, and flip (reverse the orientation through the head tube) the forks and handlebars. Then, turn the thing upside-down so that both wheels are on the ground and the cranks are at the top. Since this would be a bit difficult to ride (although I have seen a picture of someone riding one this way in NYC), weld an extended seat tube to the top of the bottom bracket and an extended stem to the handlebars. Place a seat post, saddle and handlebars and it's ready to ride.

It's about the height of an "ordinary" (high-wheeler) and definitely gets the attention of motorists. I never had a close call while riding the upside-down bike. I'm not sure if I was given extra space because the motorists could all see me from quite a distance and I had their attention or if they were afraid that if they hit me I would fall through their roof and land on them, but it was the safest bike I ever rode.

Sometimes you just have to break through the stupor that many motorists find themselves in. If a clown bike does it, great. Now what happens when everyone is riding clown bikes?

I think he missed, or at least didn't adequately emphasize, the fact that humans are horrid at processing visual signals while we are moving. Most great hitters in baseball keep their head steady so that the only thing moving is the ball they are tracking. A motorist or cyclist who actually stops at a stop sign is much more likely to "see" the cross traffic than the ones who roll through, however slowly.

The article overstates the problem.It's not scary, because you don't need to see detail in your peripheral vision. You don't need to read license plates in your peripheral vision, you just need to notice a moving object so that you can react to it.That saccadic masking stuff is true, but what the article leaves out is that your peripheral vision is exquisitely sensitive to movement. So, for the split second that you are not making a saccade, if a cyclist is moving in your peripheral field, you have a good chance of noticing him/her. A minor point, but the first sentence is way off. It should read 15 million to 3.5 billion years depending on what you mean by "we are the result of."

But the main point of the article is wrong, because there isn't much difference between a charging tiger coming from your side and a cyclist coming along the road from your side. Our visual system is well-suited to detecting both of those things.

Speak for yourself. My DNA dates back to 9 billion years ago, deposited by aliens from an ancient civilization.

I don't think the article is wrong. I had always wondered what was behind the "stopped clock" illusion, and it turns out it's due to saccadic masking. They have some cool examples of it if you go to youtube and enter "stopped clock illusion" into their search engine.

And not to quibble, but I doubt Gronk was traveling at 60 MPH when the tigers tried to ambush him.

I'm not certain how far back my ancestors go but I'm certain they go back as far as anyone's.:)

The article is like a physician who suddenly becomes an expert on diet and exercise, writes a book, and everyone reacts.

Take this article to several neuroscientists whose research is connected to this. Then get the comments.

Uh, if you're about to ride out in front of someone traveling at 60MPH, perhaps it's your situational awareness and not the driver's that's suspect. :)

I wonder. It seems that you have two basic issues with the article. The first I'm interpreting as some level of dislike or annoyance with the use of words that can be seen as sensationalizing the situation. I understand that. The second seems to be your difference over the issues related to peripheral vision. Here’s my dilemma. I’m thinking you may have a valid point related to peripheral vision. However, I also think that there are some movements in my periphery to which I pay little attention. That is, I don’t bother to discern what they are. I know this to be true from experience.

So, why is it we pay attention to some things, but not others? On one hand, subject awareness would violate the basic premise of classical conditioning, i.e. conditioning is a passive, reflexive low level learning where subject awareness cannot, by definition, play a part. So, it can’t be because we are “conditioned” to attend to some things and not others. No, I think the more plausible explanation can be found in cognitive associative learning, i.e. the relationship among subjects and events within one’s environment and the meaning that has been ascribed to them. Here is where I suspect the real issue lies. Motorist, for the most part, have not developed a mental construct that gives cyclist ample weight. That is, the cyclist is somewhat “meaningless” to the motorist.

You got it wrong. If Gronk is riding his pet dinosaur at 60 MPH and a sabre tooth tiger leaps out at him and he survives and the genetic structure that enabled his survival gets passed on to future generations who then drive cars at 60 MPH and fail to spot a cyclist coming out of a side alley, does that represent a failure of the explanatory power of Darwinism?

Beats me.

If someone leaps in front of a vehicle traveling at 60 MPH, it seems to me that he's hosed, no matter how good his ancestry was.

I still think you're wrong. On evolutionary lines our peripheral vision was sacrificed in order to obtain stereovision, which is quite useful when you're swinging from tree limb to tree limb and need to be able to judge distances and spatial relationships well.

Cyclists would be safer if motorists had evolved along the lines of horses, who, because of the position of their eyes, have closer to a 360 degree field of vision.

How any of that makes any difference, though, is beyond me. I thought it was a sober, well-written article and am not really sure why it has elicited such heavy breathing.

This is good ... you have studied in this field?

A little some years ago.

Drivers tend to not "see" a motorcycle. As with bicycles, they look through the two-wheeled object. It isn't important to them (not a threat). But drivers usually "see" a police motorcycle. It is important to them.

On my bicycle, I find that I sometimes don't "see" other cyclists, but I "see" all cars. Same reason. The cars are more important to me.

Irrespective of flaws, the article provides useful takeaways:
1) Don't be a gutter bunny;
2) Wear bright colours;
3) Advocate lower speed limits on roads w/ bicycle and pedestrian traffic;
4) Advocate a ban on all cell phone use by motorists (focusdriven.org).

I also think it's time for me to splurge on those super-bright front and rear "blinkies" -- daytime running lights for bikes, if you will.

Couple of points-

London

Cyclists.

They don't go together.The traffic in London-and I dare say most city's- is horrendous. Car drivers have a lot on their plate just to avoid having an accident- let alone with a cyclist who is far smaller than your average bus or truck. Saying that- you don't get many accidents occurring in Traffic jams. There are two parties to an accident and it is mostly one of them doing wrong---and it is not always the car driver. Just on my usual rides I see cyclists that are looking for an accident to be involved in. They think they are invulnerable and they are the one in the right. I have even ridden with people like this but only once--Never again.

But on that peripheral vision- Very vague and not reliable. I make certain that I know what is around me and what they might be doing. That goes whether I am in a car or on a bike. I keep my eyes open and head turning looking for possible problems. But I rely on others doing the same. With regard to cyclists- I want to see them. I don't want them weaving in and out of traffic at speed- I don't want them coming at me from a blind spot and I want them to respect me and other users of the road.

The article was good and may highlight a few of the problems on the roads but for me it just reinforced that I am doing everything correctly. But that doesn't stop the odd idiot that I can't cater for trying to take me out. But I am ready for them and mostly miss them.

Stapfam, I'm curious: do you wear brightly coloured cycling clothing? Something we notice when in the UK is that most cyclists wear various shades of dull. See and be seen should also be our motto.

Normally red if just a Jersey but with most of my rides it is with a Yellow Pertex or showerproof.

But one point is that I used to commute occasionally along Brighton Seafront. I had cars pull out from the left (As would be right in the US) just a bit too close and often for comfort even though I was wearing bright clothing. Then I did a commute on a dismal day that would take me into the evening and I had my front lamp set on Blink. Not one car pulled out in front of me to cause me to slow down. Since then- in traffic conditions- I always use the light on blink. Doesn't stop the cars still trying to take me out but it doesn't happen very often.