RIDE SAFE

info from arlen

[Over the past 30 years, I’ve seen plenty of motorcycle riders in the ER and the ICU with all types of injuries, minor and serious. Being a witness to that has sure helped me keep a focus on rider safety, and I’ll be sharing here each month some of what I’ve learned….and what I think. Ride safe, Douglas County HOG!]

 

Edition #3.  Ride Like You’re Invisible – Part 1

 

The Australians call it SMIDSY, short for “Sorry Mate, I didn’t see you.”

    

People in cars and trucks often don’t see us on our beloved Harleys.  The majority of fatal motorcycle accidents are caused by vehicle drivers, not by the motorcycle rider, and in about a third of these crashes, the car driver reports not seeing the motorcycle.

 

“Sorry Mate, I didn’t see you.”  Not much consolation for a rider lying on the asphalt.

 

But why don’t they see us, and what can we do to be seen? 

 

In this month’s blog, Part 1 of this 2-part series, we’ll talk about WHY they don’t see us.  Next month, we will address what we can do about it.

 

It turns out that a driver who does not see a motorcyclist is actually not always doing that on purpose; rather, it’s the way that all of our eyes and brains work.  These drivers may in fact be morons, but not seeing us is NOT always due to moronic behavior.

 

1.      Saccades.  When we use our eyes to scan left to right or right to left, our brains don’t spend the time and energy to process perfect images of every single degree of movement that our eyes undertake.  Rather, we only make perfect images every several degrees of the eye movement, and our brains “fill in” the rest with what is expected to be in those visual images.  Brains do not fill in unexpected things in the picture, and for many drivers their brain may look right past an oncoming motorcycle…..because we are unexpected.  Their brain literally does not see us.  It's like a series of photos across a scene; what is in between the photos is invisible.  Something smaller like a motorcycle may be lost in the blank spaces between photos due to saccades.  We riders can often  find ways to avoid being “unexpected;” see Part 2 next month.

2.     Selective Attention.  While processing images that the eyes are scanning, the brain also blocks out what it considers irrelevant.  The eyes will take in too much information for the brain to perfectly process in a timely manner.  Perfect processing would require like a gazillion images per second, and generally our brains don’t devote that much energy to doing this.  There are things we can do to avoid being “irrelevant” in a car driver’s brain; we’ll address those next month.

3.     Being Off Line-of-Sight.  Something that is more than 20 degrees off the center of a person’s line of sight is virtually invisible; 90% of the detail is missing.  A lot of drivers don’t scan left-right enough, and next month we’ll talk about how we can draw someone’s eye and attention our direction.

4.     Beam Blindness.  We are small enough to be coming at a car in the blind spot created by the structural beams at the sides of their windshield.  A view of us is blocked out.

5.     Truck’s Blind Spot.  Trucks have bigger blind spots next to them than cars do, and a common accident scenario is a truck coming over into the rider’s lane; riding past a big truck is one of our most risky SMIDSY moments on the road.

6.     Contrast Blindness.  If you and your motorcycle “blend in,” with no significant contrast between you and the background, it’s more likely that the driver’s brain will miss seeing you.  We can improve the contrast odds; see Part 2 next month.

7.     Distracted Driver.  We all know this one….. texting, talking on the phone, tired, half asleep; or in a mind altered state from alcohol or marijuana.  Their brain power to process more clear images is slowed or drained.  We are even more likely to be invisible, and these drivers probably won’t even apologize…

 

This all sounds pretty depressing, I know.  None of us ever want to be in a SMIDSY situation.

 

But we are not helpless or hopeless in our own defense.  Next month, I will address many things we can do to be less invisible, how we can avoid being “unexpected” or “irrelevant” in a driver’s eyes, and how we can avoid “blending in” with our backgrounds.

 

I never want to look up and hear, “Sorry Mate, I didn’t see you!”

 

Arlen Stauffer

MD, DCCC Member

 ’22 Road King Special Rider

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