Did you know that many drivers will only see what they are expecting to see? Researchers have tested this, and they find that drivers are most likely to overlook motorcycles. The reasoning is simply that most people are watching the road for cars and trucks, or other vehicles like the one that they’re driving, but they’re not specifically looking for motorcycles—so they will sometimes look directly at them without seeing them.
The name for this phenomenon is inattentional blindness. It happens because of the amount of information the brain has to process while driving a car. To avoid being overloaded, it tries to determine what information is most important and fills in the gaps with what someone would expect to see. If the brain determines that an oncoming motorcycle is relatively unimportant, it can be filtered out.
Taking more time
Being aware of this psychological trick can go a long way toward helping drivers avoid making such a key mistake. The only real counter for inattentional blindness is to take more time and allow the brain to gather more information and more details.
For example, if someone is going to turn left out of their driveway, they may just quickly glance both ways down the road. That quick glance isn’t enough for them to see the motorcycle, so they pull out in front of it. But if they just took an extra second or two to really look at the scene, then their brain would stop filling in the gaps, and they would actually see the bike approaching.
Unfortunately, many drivers are in a rush or distracted, which only exacerbates the problem. If you’ve been injured in an accident one of them caused, be sure you know how to seek financial compensation.
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