Empty roads

[Horse]

You can never assume you have been seen and all you can do is your best to 'present' your vehicle.

Yup. Also an understanding of how and where people look is helpful.

For a tenner, you'll struggle to find a better summary than this:
http://www.lulu.com/gb/en/shop/kevin-wi ... 66721.html

[Strangely Brown]

Similarly:

Sleights of Mind

A fascinating insight to how your brain processes visual information.

[GTR1400MAN]

Here's a few clips that shows how easily fooled our brains our. So are they clever or stupid?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03g221y
Unfortunately the excellent full series about the brain that this clip is from is no longer available on the BBC iPlayer.

[Horse]

Similarly:

Sleights of Mind

A fascinating insight to how your brain processes visual information.

Looks interesting. Could you give a couple of examples from it that can be applied to driving?

[Horse]

DIY cylinder template!

https://www.divisbyzero.com/2016/07/06/ ... paper/amp/

[sussex2]

You can never assume you have been seen and all you can do is your best to 'present' your vehicle.

Yup. Also an understanding of how and where people look is helpful.

For a tenner, you'll struggle to find a better summary than this:
http://www.lulu.com/gb/en/shop/kevin-wi ... 66721.html

Seeing what you wish to see and acting on it is common. It is well known in the aviation industry so I've no doubt it is common on the roads.

[sussex2]

You can never assume you have been seen and all you can do is your best to 'present' your vehicle.

Yup. Also an understanding of how and where people look is helpful.

For a tenner, you'll struggle to find a better summary than this:
http://www.lulu.com/gb/en/shop/kevin-wi ... 66721.html

Seeing what you wish to see and acting on it is common. It is well known in the aviation industry so I've no doubt it is common on the roads.

As an example and experienced crew starting a take off run 2/3 down a runway, in broad daylight and their intentions having been questioned twice, by air traffic control. The crew saw what they wanted to see, not what was actually there.

No number of headlights/sirens etc can prevent these things from happening.

Many moons ago on a driving course somewhere in the West Midlands (1 instructor 3 students) the student driving had been warned before about assumption and as we negotiated a junction uttered the famous words 'He's seen me' and increased speed - at exactly the same time as the vehicle that had 'seen' him pulled out.
The course continued with 1 instructor and two pupils in the car.

[dvenman]

Similarly:

Sleights of Mind

A fascinating insight to how your brain processes visual information.

Looks interesting. Could you give a couple of examples from it that can be applied to driving?

One famous one. Saccades. If the magician moves their hand in a sweep and you follow it, you miss other things happening with his other hand. Move your eyes in a stop/start manner, you miss less. So "fly fishing" observation is about moving the eyes with a short stop at far/middle/near to allow the brain to take it in.

[Strangely Brown]

Similarly:

Sleights of Mind

A fascinating insight to how your brain processes visual information.

Looks interesting. Could you give a couple of examples from it that can be applied to driving?

The takeaway for me was confirmation or reinforcement of the notion that you can only concentrate on one thing at a time. Humans do NOT multi-task. Some are able to time-slice better than others but we all can only concentrate on one thing at a time.

The biggest application of this of course is the use of telephones while driving but it extends to other things too. Even a conversation in the car can give rise to the same problems.

The problem is that when you use your visual cortex to process information by visualising a situation or recalling something visual, it is not available to process information coming in through the eyes. You absolutely *will* miss things.

Even if you momentarily find yourself having mentally wandered off or are distracted for a few moments thinking about something other than your drive, if when you snap back to reality you try to recall the last 30 seconds and are intellectually honest about it you may find that it is just not there. It's blank. You were on a subconscious auto-pilot. It happens to all of us far more often that we are prepared to admit and it is nigh on impossible to prevent. Mitigate, maybe but that's about it.

[Horse]

The takeaway for me was confirmation or reinforcement of the notion that you can only concentrate on one thing at a time. Humans do NOT multi-task. Some are able to time-slice better than others but we all can only concentrate on one thing at a time.

The biggest application of this of course is the use of telephones while driving but it extends to other things too. Even a conversation in the car can give rise to the same problems.

The problem is that when you use your visual cortex to process information by visualising a situation or recalling something visual, it is not available to process information coming in through the eyes. You absolutely *will* miss things.

A mate was doing research for his PhD, about 15 years ago. It involved a very basic form of reaction timing, responding to on-screen prompts.Typically I was sub-0.5s.

Then the second half involved the same, but with a listening and responding task (listen to a recording of a listing of random letters, say 'yes' to every 'S'. My reaction time to the visual task went up to 2 seconds.

I've needed no convincing since.