Cyclists are genuinely harder to see than cars - I don’t understand why this would be a mystery - they have a smaller visible outline and they are typically moving slower than cars (which means they are more likely to remain concealed behind some obscuring object for the duration of a glance).
I do my very best to be as considerate and cautious as possible around cyclists, but there are times when I have had a bit of a fright nearly pulling out in front of a cyclist, just because circumstances conspired to hide them from my view/attention.
Basically describes the expectation of what one will see when one encounters a familiar location. A bank patron can expect a tall desk with tellers behind waiting to serve, red velvet rope and line at a play, a grandstand at a sporting event, and a large, wide metal vehicle with two widely spaced headlamps and a driver behind glass at the opposing spot at an intersection.
A single headlight perched on the front of a skinny, single wide bike isn’t quite on the registry.
I remember taking my tractor trailer road test. My instructor instructed me to make an emergency stop in the shoulder. I signaled, tapped the brake pedal to flash my lights, came to a stop in the shoulder, turned on my hazards, and said “if I am to be stopped for more than ten minutes I would now immediately place three orange safety cones behind my vehicle to alert other drivers that I am broken down.” He said “okay, now go.” I waited about 15 seconds and he said “hey, we don’t have all day, c’mon.” I waited another five seconds and be was starting to yell again and a bicycle passed on the sidewalk. “He disappeared into my blind spot when i stopped and killing someone is probably an automatic fail, right?” “Oh.”
This guy was a passenger, he’s a professional commercial driving teacher, and he didn’t notice the bike.
He he he… What I said was, “Eye contact is not a guarantee that they see you as has happened to me while riding a bicycle.”
Now you know you are in IMHO but your brain has forgotten to remind you that a poster does not need to ‘cite’ anything. I am sure your eyes saw the forum title but …
Data point of one:
What happened to me.
I was on the main street crossing a T intersection that had a stop sign. I had the right of way and there was five vehicles waiting in that side street behind the stop sign.
The driver in the front car turned & looked at me while I was some few bicycle lengths from crossing in front of him. He watched me, with his eyes, which I could see & was also turning his head to keep me in sight.
When I was about ½ way through that intersection, while looking at me as I was looking at him, he pulled out and ran over me. I
I saw him coming of course and managed to get everything but my rear wheel out of the way & by doing a spinning type of get off, he only bumped me. Did a number on the bike.
He kept going straight across the street into an abandoned building parking space. He just sat there, crying I found out later. A rent-a-cop in the third car back
checked me, then ran over to him and started yelling at him saying that, he could see me just fine & what was the matter with him.
He did not see me…
Can’t see the forest for the trees?
Did not see the gorilla walk across the stage video?
Sound familiar?
It is very common for people to look at something & not see it. No cite of course.
I was the car in a car-bicyclist collision maybe 7 or 8 years ago.
TL,DR version: He’s fine, ambiguous blame (I’ll take some, though), scary learning experience.
I’ve spoilered the story since it got a little long.
It was downtown Chicago, Wabash Ave.
Scheduled was a visit to a client where I had to turn down a specific alley to park and turn the keys over to a guard who watches the vehicle and moves it if needed. I have never been that familiar with getting around downtown and driving even less. This was my first time to this place and had to go on the sketchy directions of a coworker and paper maps. There are lots of one-ways and distractions and pedestrians. So after driving around to get my bearings and find the front of the target building to get an address, I figured out which alley I needed to enter. This particular portion of Wabash (enhanced photo) has elevated rail tracks running over the street for extra I-beam obstacle confusion. I was coming from a bit north and looking for my alley. He must have turned onto the street behind me as I’m sure I didn’t pass him.
I made my left turn from the left lane and he shouted ‘Nooo!’ and hit my work vehicle at the drivers side front wheel. He went down and I stopped where I was. A few onlookers and I approached to help him but he jumped up, he brushed himself off while muttering ‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ climbed back on his bike and was off. I can’t quite remember but I think he had a scrape on his hand (or maybe knee?) and his front wheel needed some truing. I was really, really shaken and remember watching as he rode off. The whole thing was done in 90 seconds.
Was he supposed to be on the left side? I’m still not sure. Could I have prevented the collision? Probably, but I would have had to have been watching my driver’s side mirror instead of the looking forward and quick mirror glance might not have done it. Entering the alley meant crossing a busy sidewalk and that’s where my attention was focused which I think was the right thing to do, not to mention possible oncoming vehicles in the alley. Still, I’ll never forget it and it really changed my driving habits. I’ve always been one to do a ‘head check’ when changing lanes or merging and I now do often take a glance at the drivers mirror when turning left from a one-way. It also reinforced my bicycling habits of seeing and being seen.
I always keep a sharp eye for bikes and pedestrians. Bikes are easily seen when in your field of view. The problem is that the view is easily obstructed by parked cars, trees, your front window post, etc. I don’t know how many times I’ve backed out of my driveway, checked for anything coming, see nothing, and suddenly there’s a bike rider as I start to back into the street. It doesn’t help that we live on a bike corridor and some of these folks are really hauling ass on their way to work. A small, fast-moving object can easily get lost in the scenery.
The real issue is apparently size profile. Bicycles and motorcycles are not much bigger than pedestrians, so when someone takes a glance and sees something person-sized, they assume you’re moving at 3mph or so and they’ve got all the time in the world. They look again mid-turn and WHOA - you’re right there. It’s the main reason left turns are the bane of two-wheeled existence - people turn in front of you because they see you’re not in a car, and therefore can’t be going as fast as them.
That’s in addition to the usual issues with a narrow profile - easier to disappear into blindspots, behind A-pillars, etc. Most people don’t have their mirrors set-up properly anyway, and have 3 views to the rear. :rolleyes:
The “make eye contact” trick does one thing - it highlights how often people aren’t looking where they’re going. Car or bike, I see people all the time who don’t look both directions before pulling out into traffic.
He probably did, I don’t recall for sure. Point is, I looked his direction, trying to ensure that nothing was coming that way, and flat out didn’t notice him, and I should have.
One of the terms used is inattentional blindness. Drivers tend to get used to other cars such that they don’t see other things on the road. As they have more experience with them or are in regions where they expect them the inattentional blindness is reduced. For example in urban areas drivers expect pedestrians year-round so they usually see them.
I am a year-round biker. Used to be that in the cold months I was one of very few cyclists on the road. Things were often at their worst during these months. Not because of weather, not because of dark hours, but because the number of riders was so few that drivers got comfy in their minds that there would only be cars and trucks on the roads.
My fellow riders always would note that the beginning of warm weather was always the most dangerous as drivers had the road to themselves for months and the inattentive took time to shake out of their mentality.
These days there are a lot more cyclists riding in the winter. It has meant a reduction in inattentiveness issues, but not elimination.
I haven’t mastered the search function, but there was a recent discussion here in which the brightly colored apparel worn by cyclists was disparaged several times. I’m not sure that most automobile drivers realize those loud colors serve to protect the cyclist, the brighter the better.
I don’t recall the link, but there’s a recognized phenomenon where drivers are simply overwhelmed with visual information and can’t process it all (I’ll call it visual overload although I don’t know if that was a term). It typically happens on higher speed urban arterials with a lot of traffic, advertising signs, street fixtures, and such. So “not seeing” a bicycle would be believable. Personally I never ride on the street for any reason, even a bicycle lane, but of course that’s limiting and not practical for a lot of bicyclists.
That is pretty much correct. If the bike lane is to your right and you have to cross it to go into the Townmall parking lot, you will almost certainly not notice the bicycle you pass as you approach the parking lot entrance. Even if the bike is only 20 feet from where you are going to turn, chances are you will simply not see it because it is not in your path (yet). Bicyclists get furious when cars hook them like this, but the reality is that drivers are just not good at vector math: if they do notice the bike, they most likely will decide that it is either not going fast enough to be concerned about or that it just does not matter. You may expect to see bikes in the bike lane, but that is no guarantee that you will notice them.
Bicycle nothing, I drive a teeny tiny car and it’s as if the thing is invisible the way some drivers behave. I feel like I need a full set of amber flashing lights on front, top, and rear just to make damn sure everybody knows I’m coming.
Of course a lot of cyclists are completely unconcerned about zipping back and forth around the multi-ton vehicles that surround them; when I was a kid we had those giant orange flags that stuck up about eight feet in the air, warning all and sundry we were approaching; maybe that’s an idea that should be revived for the modern urban cyclist who wants to stay in one piece. Or they could, you know, obey traffic laws, as they’re supposed to, and look out for the giant, blind-spot-having metal things that can kill them.
As some cyclists have pointed out, obeying the law doesn’t stop people lane-changing into you, weaving into the bike lane, or ignoring the right of way. Heck, nothing would help with Chicago cabbies, who truly believe it’s a cabbie world and we’re just living in it.
I am trying to be a careful driver, but I don’t see pedestrian at night and they are wearing black; and I just want to yell “Does your mother know that you are being an asshole”
Not only do I live in a subdivision where we need streetlights and sidewalks, nobody fucking teaches kids to use the sidewalk and my mother often brings up the accident that killed two kindergardeners, because someone had to be an asshole and dragrace down my road seven years ago.
I don’t like being on a phone when I am driving. I’d rather park and talk than drive and talk.
