CycleCraft - a discussion...

brat

modsandmockers wrote: »

It’s in CycleCraft, innit…

‘Motorists primarily give attention to that part of the road where there is risk to themselves’
‘More collisions happen because drivers cannot see a cyclist….than because they do see but fail to take notice’

Neither of those statements support those hypotheses of yours. Franklin's second statement is the opposite of the point you're trying to make.

modsandmockers wrote: »

Nobody can process every part of what is visible, especially in a fast-changing traffic situation. People will concentrate on the bits that they regard as important, and will ignore the bits that are insignificant. Unfortunately, some less experienced/competent drivers will unconsciously include cyclists in the latter category - did you think I meant to to say that they would ‘edit out’ the cyclists deliberately?

Do you have the slightest piece of supporting evidence to support this radical assertion that less experienced or less competent motorists will subconsciously erase cyclists from their considerations because they perceive the cyclist to be an insignificant road hazard!!

If you need to invent stuff to support a theory, there's a good chance the theory is wrong.

Norman_Castle

JP08 wrote: »

Said pedestrian looked at me (we actually made eye contact !) saw at the car approaching some distance behind me, and at a range of about 3 feet, stepped out into the road in front of me. I swear I actually saw his eyes de-focus on me and focus on the car.

Anyhow, complete perler over the handlebars from the emergency stop and impact with the road, slowed only by a hefty impact on said pedestrian's shoulder in passing.

When driving in slow traffic I look at pedestrians in the eye followed by an invitation to cross if i'm happy for them to cross in front of me but not if i've no intention of stopping. I've looked pedestrians in the eye while cycling and they seem to consider it an invitation to cross. I think pedestrians misinterpret extended eye contact as a road user being courteous rather than cautious.
Looking away as soon as eye contact is made or looking towards them but not in the eye may be a better practice.

Strider590

brat wrote: »

because they perceive the cyclist to be an insignificant road hazard!!

.

Spot on!

Describes the whole problem between (some) drivers and cyclists, in just 11 words

JP08

'fraid not, Frisbee. This guy would have got me one way or another (either wheel first like he did where I was riding a good yard from the kerb) or side on if I'd been further out - such was his dash to beat the car.

In the absence of a handy Tardis, you'll have to take my word for it that he just zoned me out - the car became the hazard uppermost in his mind and that was it. Effectively said as much when I checked if he was ok (he was old enough - say 50s - to have done some damage and I'm a pretty courteous soul even when blood is seeping from my chin !!!)

@Norman Castle - the idea of the eye contact when on two wheels (motorised or not) is called "getting face" - ie you've seen that they've (whether they are in a large metal and glass box, a bi-wheeled device, a quadruped or Shank's Pony) seen you. It doesn't really work when in a car for some reason ... and anyhow, in this case, it wasn't slow moving traffic ...

modsandmockers

It's called 'Inattentional Blindness' -

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Inattentional_blindness

Evidence for inattentional blindness comes mostly from relatively simple laboratory tasks, but the phenomenon has many daily analogues. For example, automobile accident reports frequently report driver claims that they “looked but failed to see” the other vehicle. Many collisions between cars and motorcycles involve cars turning in front of an oncoming motorcycle, with the car driver not seeing the motorcyclist. Given that in many contexts, motorcycles are less common than cars, inattentional blindness is the likely cause.

Critically, the difficulty of the primary task increases the probability that people will miss the unexpected object. In practical terms, the more people focus on aspects of their visual world other than the detection of unexpected objects, the less likely they are to detect such objects.

Inattentional blindness illustrates a critical aspect of visual processing. Specifically, it reveals the role of selective attention in perception. Inattentional blindness allows us to remain focused on important aspects of our world without distraction from irrelevant objects and events. Only when those unselected aspects of our world are both unexpected and important does inattentional blindness have practical consequences.

http://www.theory-test-online.co.uk/theory-test/hazard-perception-skills.htm

Hazard perception in driving terms can be defined as: "The art of being able to pick out the important details from all the information provided by your senses."

(In various studies it has been discovered that the eyes of expert drivers are constantly scanning around the field of view, no doubt seeking out visual clues that will help the driver predict future events. The novice driver, on the other hand, tends to fixate on one object for some time then move to another. In the same distance travelled, where the novice may have had four or five eye fixations, the expert might have had twenty. The other major fact that was discovered was that the expert driver was continually focusing up to five times further down the road than the novice. Clearly it was this behaviour that was giving the expert the edge over the novice when it came to driving safely)

Train your mind to select only the relevant information you see. Ignore superficial information. Your hazard perception will improve with experience as you start to build up a memory of past hazardous behaviour to help you recognise the early signs of such behaviour in future.

You will, with experience, become more selective in what to focus your attention on and better able to interpret what you see. Initially you may perceive risks that aren't really there or indeed ignore risks that are.

Marco_Panettone

None of that has ANYTHING to do with road positioning though. People don't look properly. They don't look properly when you ride in primary, secondary or hug the kerb. There's nothing you can do to absolutely ensure they do look properly either. It's one of the fallacies of any of the 'be safe, be seen' stuff - it only works if the other person looks properly.


What's more, we KNOW people don't look properly, yet we design our environment to only be safe if everyone always looks properly. We need to design and build to ensure these KNOWN human errors don't lead to death and injury.

modsandmockers

But ‘looking properly’ also has very little to do with road positioning - looking properly is another name for ‘good hazard perception’, and it is a learned skill which, as you say, many road-users never learn. Cyclists are probably even more likely to become the victims of Inattentional Blindness than motor-cyclists, but you don’t seem to want to know.

When I started this thread, I was relying on the same secondhand hearsay which I believe many cyclists rely on, and I believed that one of CycleCraft’s main themes was that cyclists should at all times try to dominate the highway. But now that I have read it, I think it offers nothing but good, well-balanced advice. I, and only one other, have provided quotes from the book in an attempt to show that it stops a long way short of recommending the sort of behaviour which some people on this thread seem to regard as normal. It doesn’t even use the word ‘assertive’. There is no evidence that anyone else on the thread has actually read the book.

Having said all that, I think the book’s greatest contribution to road safety will be it’s success in persuading people that vehicular cycling is for most people and for most of the time an extremely unattractive proposition.

frisbeej

JP08 wrote: »

'fraid not, Frisbee. This guy would have got me one way or another (either wheel first like he did where I was riding a good yard from the kerb) or side on if I'd been further out - such was his dash to beat the car.

In the absence of a handy Tardis, you'll have to take my word for it that he just zoned me out - the car became the hazard uppermost in his mind and that was it. Effectively said as much when I checked if he was ok (he was old enough - say 50s - to have done some damage and I'm a pretty courteous soul even when blood is seeping from my chin !!!)

@Norman Castle - the idea of the eye contact when on two wheels (motorised or not) is called "getting face" - ie you've seen that they've (whether they are in a large metal and glass box, a bi-wheeled device, a quadruped or Shank's Pony) seen you. It doesn't really work when in a car for some reason ... and anyhow, in this case, it wasn't slow moving traffic ...

Yep, some people will take you out no matter what you do in terms of road position, adjusting your speed or covering your brakes. Statistically moving away from the risk, the pedestrian waiting to cross, is the safest thing to do.


I still disagree that it supports Mocker's argument though, his bizarre Mad Max vision of the roads.

Johnmcl7

modsandmockers wrote: »

But ‘looking properly’ also has very little to do with road positioning - looking properly is another name for ‘good hazard perception’, and it is a learned skill which, as you say, many road-users never learn. Cyclists are probably even more likely to become the victims of Inattentional Blindness than motor-cyclists, but you don’t seem to want to know.

When I started this thread, I was relying on the same secondhand hearsay which I believe many cyclists rely on, and I believed that one of CycleCraft’s main themes was that cyclists should at all times try to dominate the highway. But now that I have read it, I think it offers nothing but good, well-balanced advice. I, and only one other, have provided quotes from the book in an attempt to show that it stops a long way short of recommending the sort of behaviour which some people on this thread seem to regard as normal. It doesn’t even use the word ‘assertive’. There is no evidence that anyone else on the thread has actually read the book.

Having said all that, I think the book’s greatest contribution to road safety will be it’s success in persuading people that vehicular cycling is for most people and for most of the time an extremely unattractive proposition.

Since you're not a cyclist (and clearly very anti-cyclist), why do you think you're in a position to be advising the material cyclists should be reading? Your last statement directly contradicts itself but if you see the book's greatest contribution being that it makes cycling extremely unattractive then it's clearly not a very good book for cyclists.

John

modsandmockers

What makes you think I am not a cyclist? Is Brat a traffic cop? He seems to have little understanding of driver psychology.