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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 gor
by 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 agoYou 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 agoI 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 agoAccording 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 agoIt 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 agoWhy would a driver filter out pedestrians and bicycles?
- analog31 4y agoI 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 agoagain, why do cyclists not provide opportunity/threat data more or less than other cars?
- mitchdoogle 4y agoProbably 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?
- Chris2048 4y agoAre you suggesting car drivers aren't trained to watch out for cyclists/pedestrians?
- 4y ago