5 ms·

Agree with your speculation. Here's another one. Even WHEN THE DRIVER sees you, some subconsciously ignore you. I'v had people look straight at me, keep dri

Agree with your speculation. Here's another one. Even WHEN THE DRIVER sees you, some subconsciously ignore you. I'v had people look straight at me, keep driving then looking shocked when they finally realise and hit the brakes. I can only surmise they perceive traffic in terms of threats. When you're in a bigger car, threats are reduced.

Smoosh 4y ago
This effect also applies to motorcycle riders who are often "seen but ignored".
analog31 4y ago
There's that famous video of people dancing, where a person in a gorilla suit enters and leaves the action, and at the end, people don't remember seeing the gorilla. I think drivers are creatures of habit, especially in heavy traffic on a familiar route such as their daily work commute. They are not really in complete control of their cars -- certainly if traffic is heavy enough that nobody is following at a safe distance. Now throw distractions into the mix. I'm also an experienced urban cyclist, and I believe that route choice is a major safety factor. I have some rules of thumb for roads to avoid, and am extremely lucky that I live in a town that is fairly cycle- and pedestrian-friendly. I have a hunch that car drivers in my town have gradually adapted to the presence of cyclists, for the better. I do ride on 55 mph roads in the countryside, but only ones with very little traffic, and the region has quite friendly drivers. Stories from cyclists living in other states suggest to me that straightforward aggression is a factor in a lot of the close passes and other antics that they experience.
- mudita 4y ago
  You slightly misremembered the invisible gorilla test, a classical study about inattentional blindness. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inattentional_blindness#Invisible_Gorilla_Test https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inattentional_blindness#Invi... Somewhat fittingly "the basic Simons and Chabris study was reused on British television as a public safety advert designed to point out the potential dangers to cyclists caused by inattentional blindness in motorists."
  - Lio 4y ago
    I beleive that the paper was originally titled "Gorillas In Our Midst" which is a wonderful play on the title of the Dian Fossey book Gorillas in the Mist.
- Chris2048 4y ago
  According to the Gorilla study: > failure to attend to it while engaged in the difficult task of counting passes of the ball I'm not sure how this applies to commuting, except when the driver is attentively looking at other cars.
  - david-gpu 4y ago
    It applies because drivers tend to look for other cars, which are a threat to them, while filtering out pedestrians and bicycles. It is very noticeable as a pedestrian, e.g. when a driver enters a road through a right turn and only looks left to avoid incoming traffic, ignoring the possibility of a pedestrian coming from their right.
    - Chris2048 4y ago
      Why would a driver filter out pedestrians and bicycles?
      - analog31 4y ago
        I tend to think of the drivers, not as reacting to threats, but navigating an evolving mental model of their surroundings -- with a primary focus on opportunities rather than threats. The mechanism that updates that model doesn't have "training data" with cyclists in the picture.
        Chris2048 4y ago
        again, why do cyclists not provide opportunity/threat data more or less than other cars?
        mitchdoogle 4y ago
        Probably because of poor training and infrequent interactions with cyclists/pedestrians. If something isn't a part of your regular life, and you haven't been told you need to watch out for it, then why would you?
kqr 4y ago
At one point when biking to work I stopped at an intersection and filtered to the front. The head vehicle was a huge yellow thing built for construction work. I turned my head to see if I could see the driver (then at least he would have a chance of seeing me) and you know what he did? He understood what I was doing and pointed straight at me to indicate he had noticed me. This is something I've started doing when I'm driving now, too. I wish everyone did it.
- david-gpu 4y ago
  I'm in my 40s, I've never had a car, and the only thing that makes me feel somewhat safe when I cross in front of a vehicle is making eye contact with the driver, which is sometimes difficult with the prevalence of tinted windows. In my experience, drivers look for other cars, not for pedestrians. We are not a danger to them, so they subconsciously filter us out, as we are not a threat to them. To make things worse, in North America traffic rules are particularly hostile to pedestrians, allowing things such as right turns on red. Which is to say, as a pedestrian I am naturally not allowed to cross the street when the light is red for me, but for some unclear reason, if I were to be driving a 2-ton vehicle then somehow it is no longer considered dangerous for me to ignore the same red light. Bonkers.
  - kqr 4y ago
    The difficulty with eye contact is that it's easy to interpret as being there when the other person really just looks through you. Very common to hear about accidents when one person was confident they had eye contact and then the other just had no idea they were there. In fact, eye contact works so badly for me that I prefer looking at the front tyres – their direction and angular acceleration tells me a lot more about where the vehicle is about to be. Pointing, however, is very explicit and rarely happens by accident.
  - mitchdoogle 4y ago
    People don't look for peds because they aren't trained to, and for the most part, peds aren't that common. Only if you're in a dense urban center, would I say that they're common (in the US)
dfxm12 4y ago
That sounds like consciously ignoring you and is seriously psychotic behavior!
- mjhay 4y ago
  I have had similar experiences cycling a number of times. It's really more of a mental block. They aren't expecting to see a cyclist so they don't see one.
mitchdoogle 4y ago
I don't think threat assessment is driving people's driving habits. More likely, they didn't actually see you, or if they did, they made an assumption that you were going to wait for them or otherwise not be in their path. That could be because they don't know the laws concerning cycling, or maybe being tired/distracted/inebriated.
- danielfoster 4y ago
  It’s not unheard of for drivers in NYC to deliberately force bikers off the road if they want to cut in front. It’s happened to me.

Smoosh 4y ago

This effect also applies to motorcycle riders who are often "seen but ignored".

analog31 4y ago

There's that famous video of people dancing, where a person in a gorilla suit enters and leaves the action, and at the end, people don't remember seeing the gorilla. I think drivers are creatures of habit, especially in heavy traffic on a familiar route such as their daily work commute. They are not really in complete control of their cars -- certainly if traffic is heavy enough that nobody is following at a safe distance. Now throw distractions into the mix. I'm also an experienced urban cyclist, and I believe that route choice is a major safety factor. I have some rules of thumb for roads to avoid, and am extremely lucky that I live in a town that is fairly cycle- and pedestrian-friendly. I have a hunch that car drivers in my town have gradually adapted to the presence of cyclists, for the better. I do ride on 55 mph roads in the countryside, but only ones with very little traffic, and the region has quite friendly drivers. Stories from cyclists living in other states suggest to me that straightforward aggression is a factor in a lot of the close passes and other antics that they experience.

mudita 4y ago
You slightly misremembered the invisible gorilla test, a classical study about inattentional blindness. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inattentional_blindness#Invisible_Gorilla_Test https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inattentional_blindness#Invi... Somewhat fittingly "the basic Simons and Chabris study was reused on British television as a public safety advert designed to point out the potential dangers to cyclists caused by inattentional blindness in motorists."
- Lio 4y ago
  I beleive that the paper was originally titled "Gorillas In Our Midst" which is a wonderful play on the title of the Dian Fossey book Gorillas in the Mist.
Chris2048 4y ago
According to the Gorilla study: > failure to attend to it while engaged in the difficult task of counting passes of the ball I'm not sure how this applies to commuting, except when the driver is attentively looking at other cars.
- david-gpu 4y ago
  It applies because drivers tend to look for other cars, which are a threat to them, while filtering out pedestrians and bicycles. It is very noticeable as a pedestrian, e.g. when a driver enters a road through a right turn and only looks left to avoid incoming traffic, ignoring the possibility of a pedestrian coming from their right.
  - Chris2048 4y ago
    Why would a driver filter out pedestrians and bicycles?
    - analog31 4y ago
      I tend to think of the drivers, not as reacting to threats, but navigating an evolving mental model of their surroundings -- with a primary focus on opportunities rather than threats. The mechanism that updates that model doesn't have "training data" with cyclists in the picture.
      - Chris2048 4y ago
        again, why do cyclists not provide opportunity/threat data more or less than other cars?
        mitchdoogle 4y ago
        Probably because of poor training and infrequent interactions with cyclists/pedestrians. If something isn't a part of your regular life, and you haven't been told you need to watch out for it, then why would you?

kqr 4y ago

At one point when biking to work I stopped at an intersection and filtered to the front. The head vehicle was a huge yellow thing built for construction work. I turned my head to see if I could see the driver (then at least he would have a chance of seeing me) and you know what he did? He understood what I was doing and pointed straight at me to indicate he had noticed me. This is something I've started doing when I'm driving now, too. I wish everyone did it.

david-gpu 4y ago
I'm in my 40s, I've never had a car, and the only thing that makes me feel somewhat safe when I cross in front of a vehicle is making eye contact with the driver, which is sometimes difficult with the prevalence of tinted windows. In my experience, drivers look for other cars, not for pedestrians. We are not a danger to them, so they subconsciously filter us out, as we are not a threat to them. To make things worse, in North America traffic rules are particularly hostile to pedestrians, allowing things such as right turns on red. Which is to say, as a pedestrian I am naturally not allowed to cross the street when the light is red for me, but for some unclear reason, if I were to be driving a 2-ton vehicle then somehow it is no longer considered dangerous for me to ignore the same red light. Bonkers.
- kqr 4y ago
  The difficulty with eye contact is that it's easy to interpret as being there when the other person really just looks through you. Very common to hear about accidents when one person was confident they had eye contact and then the other just had no idea they were there. In fact, eye contact works so badly for me that I prefer looking at the front tyres – their direction and angular acceleration tells me a lot more about where the vehicle is about to be. Pointing, however, is very explicit and rarely happens by accident.
- mitchdoogle 4y ago
  People don't look for peds because they aren't trained to, and for the most part, peds aren't that common. Only if you're in a dense urban center, would I say that they're common (in the US)

dfxm12 4y ago

That sounds like consciously ignoring you and is seriously psychotic behavior!

mjhay 4y ago
I have had similar experiences cycling a number of times. It's really more of a mental block. They aren't expecting to see a cyclist so they don't see one.

mitchdoogle 4y ago

I don't think threat assessment is driving people's driving habits. More likely, they didn't actually see you, or if they did, they made an assumption that you were going to wait for them or otherwise not be in their path. That could be because they don't know the laws concerning cycling, or maybe being tired/distracted/inebriated.

danielfoster 4y ago
It’s not unheard of for drivers in NYC to deliberately force bikers off the road if they want to cut in front. It’s happened to me.