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Why SMIDSYs happen
A fascinating review by a cycling psychologist into why SMIDSY's happen.
Lots of good stuff to reflect on and learn from. http://staff.bath.ac.uk/pssiw/cognit...ableReview.pdf "In accidents where a VRU is struck by a vehicle, the literature suggests that many incidents occur because drivers expect only to interact with other automobiles and so attend to their surroundings in such a way that VRUs are overlooked. This is perhaps most dramatically seen in the looked-but-failed-to-see phenomenon, where drivers do not expect to encounter VRUs and so do not become aware of VRUs even though they look at them" There is a fascinating piece on pedestrian fault fatalities: "Fontaine and Gourlet (1997) found that in many pedestrian-initiated accidents (28% overall, rising to 41% in people aged between 16 and 44), the pedestrian had recently left a vehicle or was planning shortly to get into one. In particular, the authors refer to many police reports of heavy goods vehicle drivers who were killed soon after leaving their trucks. The drivers in all these accidents were apparently walking around in the mindset of a motorist, and so continued to act as if they were protected from other traffic" -- Tony "I did make a mistake once - I thought I'd made a mistake but I hadn't" Anon |
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#2
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Why SMIDSYs happen
I wonder how this research accounts for the even more common 'Fu*ck it
it's only a cyclist, I am pulling out anyway' phenomena? I feel that phrases such as 'drivers expect only to interact with other automobiles and so attend to their surroundings in such a way that VRUs are overlooked' is just another way of saying that 'drivers don't bother to look out for cyclists. Unfortunately such 'scientific' statements are all too often taken as excusing drivers for 'seeing' cyclists, when in reality they are simply pointing out the fact that many motorists don't bother taking proper observations! This 'failed to see' nonsense is, for the most part, hogwash cooked up by the motoring lobby to excuse driving without due care and worse. For one thing if the 'findings' were robust drivers would never or rarely see cyclists and other VRU's, but for the most part they do. This indicates that it is the failings of individual drivers which is the real cause of the problem. Most cyclists will have experienced the deliberate pull out (Which can sometimes be distinguished from a genuine case of driving without due care by the motorists raised middle index finger as he drives away) and I am convinced that in many cases the driver sees the cyclist perfectly well but simply assumes that all cyclists travel at 4 mph. If this research has some validity surely it also suggests that 'high visibility' clothing is pretty pointless if the driver is not looking for VRU's full stop. If they take a proper observation they will see them anyway.. If they are only looking for vehicles what the cyclist wears is immaterial. I do recall reading a report which pointed out that the 'high visibility' jacket is so common that it hardly registers anymore and certainly does not signal 'cyclist ahead' to drivers. This is important because it is unambiguous signals- such as the flashing red light of a LED rear light- which are most effective in ensuring that drivers adapt their behaviour appropriately. I discussed this issue with a community officer at York rally last year. He said that when riding to work in a bright yellow jacket he was frequently cut up by drivers who 'failed to see' him. However, when on duty wearing a similar top (only with 'Police' written on it) he seemed to be spotted by drivers from miles away. Again this suggests that drivers really do see cyclists perfectly well, but fail to act appropriately unless they see that the cyclist is also a police officer... |
#3
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Why SMIDSYs happen
A fascinating review by a cycling psychologist into why SMIDSY's happen. Lots of good stuff to reflect on and learn from. http://staff.bath.ac.uk/pssiw/cognit...ableReview.pdf For some reason the document crashes my browser so at the risk of repeating information contained in the pdf: There has also been two articles published in Bike magazine which attempt to explain two types of SMIDSY, one through a physical impediment and one through a perceptual impediment. The physical impediment arises from the ever increasing width of the pillars, front and rear of many cars which increases the size of the blind spots in the field of view of the motorist especially on roundabouts. It then explains how this can be negated by the driver altering his/her head position and how motorcyclists can alter their road positioning to bring themselves into view. The second article was a fascinating insight into the psychology of vision. Paraphrased, it suggests that a vehicle on a main road approaching another waiting to pull out onto the main road occupies a cone of vison. If the size and speed of the vehicle is such that the geometry of the rate of image size increase on the retina falls between a specific range of values, the car, or any other appraoching vehicle does not register on the conciousness until it 'materialises' suddenly just before an impact or a very near miss. I was quite sceptical about this theory until it happened to me, thankfully a near miss. I couldn't believe that a car could appear out of nowhere but on this one occasion, one did. |
#4
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Why SMIDSYs happen
I wonder how this research accounts for the even more common 'Fu*ck it
it's only a cyclist, I am pulling out anyway' phenomena? I feel that phrases such as 'drivers expect only to interact with other automobiles and so attend to their surroundings in such a way that VRUs are overlooked' is just another way of saying that 'drivers often don't bother to look out for cyclists'. Unfortunately such 'scientific' statements are all too often taken as excusing drivers for 'not seeing' cyclists, when in reality they are simply pointing out the fact that many motorists don't bother taking proper observations! This 'failed to see' stuff is, for the most part, hogwash cooked up by the motoring lobby to excuse driving without due care and worse. For one thing if the 'findings' were robust drivers would never or rarely see cyclists and other VRU's, but for the most part they do. This indicates that it is the failings of individual drivers which is the real cause of the problem. We also have to look at where 'failed to see' incidents occur. The most common place is on roundabouts simply becase roundabouts encourage drivers to continue straight ahead without having to stop or slow down. If the 'failed to see' phenomena was not in reality a reflection of other factors, such as the motorist's desire not to slow down if at all possible, 'failed to see' collisions would not be 'clustered' in such locations. Most cyclists will have experienced the deliberate pull-out (Which can sometimes be distinguished from a genuine case of driving without due care by the motorists raised middle index finger as he drives away) and I am convinced that in many cases the driver sees the cyclist perfectly well but simply assumes that all cyclists travel at 4 mph. If this research has some validity surely it suggests that 'high visibility' clothing is pretty pointless if the driver is not looking for VRU's full stop. If they take a proper observation they will see them anyway.. If they are only looking for vehicles what the cyclist wears is immaterial. I do recall reading a report which pointed out that the 'high visibility' jacket is so common nowadays that it hardly registers anymore and certainly does not signal 'cyclist ahead' to drivers. This is important because it is unambiguous signals- such as the flashing red light of a LED rear light- which are most effective in ensuring that drivers adapt their behaviour appropriately. I discussed this issue with a community officer at York rally last year. He said that when riding to work in a bright yellow jacket he was frequently cut up by drivers who 'failed to see' him. However, when on duty wearing a similar top (only with 'Police' written on it) he seemed to be spotted by drivers from miles away. Again this suggests that drivers really do see cyclists perfectly well, but fail to act appropriately unless they see that the cyclist is also obviously a police officer... |
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Why SMIDSYs happen
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#6
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Why SMIDSYs happen
vernon levy wrote: There has also been two articles published in Bike magazine which attempt to explain two types of SMIDSY, one through a physical impediment and one through a perceptual impediment. Yes, written by Paul 'blame it on a dead person if you are caught speeding' Smith... I did 'discuss' his 'SMIDSY' stuff with P*** S**** once. His solution was not to educate drivers to take proper observations (remember the old 'Think once, think twice think bike! adverts) but for cyclists to go so slowly that when drivers did pull out without taking a proper observation they could stop in time. Of course the one thing guaranteed to encourage a pull-out is if the driver thinks the cyclists is travelling slowly! I also note that in the ABD press release concerning Smith's SMIDSYS' 'research' no mention at all was made of the risk this behaviour poses to cyclists... |
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Why SMIDSYs happen
P.s someone is sure to bring up that old chestnut about the research
which found that people didn't quickly spot gorilla's hidden in pictures of everyday scenes. The whole point of this is that you would never expect to see a gorilla in the street. However cyclists and pedestrians are very common features and may perfectly well be expected to be encountered! Hence there is no parallel between the two situations. |
#8
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Why SMIDSYs happen
Tony Raven mentioned:
A fascinating review by a cycling psychologist into why SMIDSY's happen. Lots of good stuff to reflect on and learn from. I thought the name Ian Walker was familiar. He used to be a regular here - according to Google, he last posted on 05/11/04. -- Danny Colyer (my reply address is valid but checked infrequently) URL:http://www.colyer.plus.com/danny/ Subscribe to PlusNet URL:http://www.colyer.plus.com/referral/ "He who dares not offend cannot be honest." - Thomas Paine |
#9
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Why SMIDSYs happen
Tony Raven wrote: Perhaps if you read the report I linked to it would answer many of your questions. I have just started reading this and it looks like a typically poor piece of psychological research (And I speak as someone with a first-class honours degree in the subject). Straight off the paper states: The scope of the review will encompass all psychological topics which are unique to the issue of VRUs. These criteria mean the exclusion of several factors which undoubtedly affect VRU safety - excessive speed, alcohol, and aggression are three that come immediately to mind (see also Rothengatter, 1997). However, factors like these are either not psychological or they affect all road users, and so are not considered here. I.e. in many cases where the driver claimed that he/she 'didn't see' the VRU other factors are quite possibly the real cause of the crash, such as aggressive driving (and perhaps any of the other factors I mentioned at above). However, even if 95% of 'failed to see' incidents are due to these other factors, as I am a psychologist I will concentrate on the perceptual issues which in all possibility are very peripheral to the real issues involved... |
#10
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Why SMIDSYs happen
vernon levy wrote:
A fascinating review by a cycling psychologist into why SMIDSY's happen. Lots of good stuff to reflect on and learn from. http://staff.bath.ac.uk/pssiw/cognit...ableReview.pdf For some reason the document crashes my browser so at the risk of repeating information contained in the pdf: There has also been two articles published in Bike magazine which attempt to explain two types of SMIDSY, one through a physical impediment and one through a perceptual impediment. Funny, checked and it opens fine in my Firefox browser. But it suggests a third very different reason to the two in Bike. "The main identified cause of collisions to bicyclists is a process described in the context of general driver psychology by Hills (1980) and Moray (1990), and more recently in the specific case of bicycling by Räsänen and Summala (1998). People have a highly limited ability to receive visual information, being able to fixate on fewer than three points per second at the very maximum (Moray, 1990). To compensate for this, after more than a few hours’ experience of a complex task like driving they develop mental models of what goes on in their surroundings. These mental models – expectations, in other words – guide attention to the areas of the surrounding scene most likely to be important. Because a typical driver’s encounters are predominantly with motor vehicles, their expectation will usually be that only other automobiles will be present at a junction. This expectation guides their attention to motor vehicles and parts of the road where these might be found and away from cyclists and areas where these tend to be. snip The expectation-attention process is seen even more dramatically in the ‘looked-but-failed-to-see phenomenon’ (Hills, 1980), whereby even a driver looking in the right direction to see a cyclist might not become consciously aware that the cyclist is there. This most commonly happens with more experienced drivers (Herslund & Jørgensen, 2003), precisely because these are more likely to have habitual search patterns which focus attention in very narrow regions of the visual scene likely to contain motor traffic; regions of space likely to contain cyclists (e.g., the edge of the road) receive less attention (Herslund & Jørgensen, 2003; Hills, 1980; Moray, 1990; see also Joshi, Senior, & Smith, 2001; Mannering & Grodsky, 1995)." He goes on to link this to the studies we all know showing cycling to be safer the more people cycle, because cyclists get built into the expectations model, cyclist road positioning and also to some interesting observations and research (on turning right onto crossing pedestrians) to back it up: "Houten et al. (2000) tested a system where the pedestrians were given a 3-second head-start before cars were given a green light. This greatly reduced the number of conflicts between pedestrians and motorists. Presumably, given the expectation–attention model we have discussed, the system worked because by the time motorists rounded the corner, the pedestrians were in the middle of the road, where drivers focus their attention. This is similar to the bicycle safety advice mentioned above, which similarly identified being in the middle of the carriageway as safer." -- Tony "I did make a mistake once - I thought I'd made a mistake but I hadn't" Anon |
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