Sympathy. They might well have killed a classic, and lucky not to kill a person. But who has never had the experience of a near miss because we just didn’t see another vehicle, or been a victim?
When I was 19 I had a scooter, and a car pulled out and stopped in front of me while he waited for a gap on the other side of the road to turn right into. I was literally 5 yards from him, hit him amidships and pitched over the roof of his car. Lambretta dead, me just grazes. He said “you must have been speeding, you weren’t there when I looked”. I’d been doing about 20.
Two little known facts -
The first one explains the frequency of SMIDSY’s - it’s possible to look, without seeing.
Secondly, if drivers were taught why this is, and how to avoid it, they wouldn’t pull out in front of MX-5’s and other road users. Lives would undoubtedly be saved.
Many will have seen this already but I keep sharing it.
A Fighter Pilot’s Guide to Surviving on the Roads
That’s a pdf link, if it dies then just google the link title, there are many copies on the internet.
The main problem is that we tend to scan for traffic as if we can do it like a video camera pans. The reality is that vision doesn’t work that way. You can only see things you actually look at, when you look at them, plus a little bit of peripheral vision. When your eyes are moving from one object to another, you see nothing at all. You don’t actually notice the view go blank, because your brain edits that bit out, but you are blind. It’s easy to prove, just stand in front of a mirror and look at one of your pupils. Then switch to looking at the other one. You can’t see your eyes move, however hard you try. It’s not because your eyes don’t move enough - if you get somebody else to try it while you stand next to them, you can very easily see their eyes move.
Apologies to those who’ve seen this before. It’s been around for at least 10 years to my knowledge. I hope others find it as useful as I did.
