False Negatives and the "Didn't see" issue

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nobbie48

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False negatives (Or positives) are part of our brain pattern. If you give someone in quality control a job of sorting 100,000 cards and putting a tick mark in the corner if they have a dot in the middle and all but a few of the cards have a dot in the middle the brain gets into a pattern of see card, make tick mark.
Then along comes a card without a dot and the brain is in such a habit of saying "Make tick mark" that the person makes a tick mark on the card even though there is no dot.
How much of a factor is this when people don't see a bike? If the brain is used to not seeing bikes does it make a false negative when there is one there?
People drive through newly erected stop signs because the brain says "You've done it a thousand times before so do it again. No need for superfluous information."
People walk into open manholes for the same reason.
We keep talking about visibilty and that's not bad thing but is there a next step up?
 
Motorcycles make up a tiny portion of the vehicles on the road, people are not conditioned to see them, and combined with the small profile, they will be overlooked. The onus is on the motorcyclist to know this and ride accordingly. Expect the left turner, use lateral movement to be seen, slow down at intersections, there are all kinds of things we can do to help ourselves. Expecting drivers to adapt and see us, is a foolish approach.
 
I think this brings a point into the "Be highly visual" aspect of riding. slime green and floresent (sp?) orange may look funny but it definitaly grabs peoples attention. The same could be said about loud (er) then stock exhausts. How loud you want to go is your choice or the type of whine/grunt your bike makes, is again your choice.

What ever we can do to step out of the daily norm for people to see us is that much more a step in the right direction.
 
Someone else's velocity is difficult to gauge until they get up close, and if they're travelling fast, you have very little time to guess.

Smaller vehicles exaggerate the problem.

Making the bike wider and triangulating the front lighting help, but slowing down near potential situations helps the most.

I used to live near the feeder road to a highway, and you had to make a left turn into moving traffic or find another route.

Occassionally, I'd cut out in front of cars that were doing double the speed limit and not realize it because they were so far away at the time.

I was never rear-ended, and never pulled in front of a bike, but bikes always seem to have a harder time decelerating suddenly, than cars.
 
mikbusa said:
Motorcycles make up a tiny portion of the vehicles on the road, people are not conditioned to see them, and combined with the small profile, they will be overlooked. The onus is on the motorcyclist to know this and ride accordingly. Expect the left turner, use lateral movement to be seen, slow down at intersections, there are all kinds of things we can do to help ourselves. Expecting drivers to adapt and see us, is a foolish approach.
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Very true. The only time i see bikers is when i do my usual double/triple shoulder and mirror checks before changing lanes. I am a calm driver and very careful.
However, on my bike i was completely invisible with the stock pipe. But ever since i got the "loud" exhaust (not gonna mention what i have) i am very visible to drivers. Especially when i am in their blindspots. Often times at the lights drivers next to me tells me if it wasn't for my loud exhaust they'd never seen me or even know i was on the next lane beside them. I am NOT claiming that loud pipes save lives. Just my experience. Neither do i ride in people's blindspots. Even in heavy traffic i try to stay in their peripheral vision.
 
Well, I guess the problems comes from "the brain". The brain is working relatively much slower than our reaction (reflection). When someone tries to drive by his/her brain - he/she will never see the things happening around, just a steady predicted picture.
 
gixxe_r said:
Very true. The only time i see bikers is when i do my usual double/triple shoulder and mirror checks before changing lanes. I am a calm driver and very careful.
However, on my bike i was completely invisible with the stock pipe.
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Makes sense.. my bike is pretty quite under around 5-6k rpm, so if I'm in an uncomfortable situation surrounded by cars, I'll drop it down a gear so they can hear me. I also try to pass cars and trucks quickly, I don't like hanging around beside them or in their blind spot.

I heard the safest speed for bikes to be going is slightly faster than everyone else, which sounds right. It keeps you fresh, out of blind spots and the like. If you get bored, your mind starts to wander.. then trouble
 
gixxe_r said:
However, on my bike i was completely invisible with the stock pipe. But ever since i got the "loud" exhaust (not gonna mention what i have) i am very visible to drivers.
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The drivers are just spinning their head left and right trying to locate you. until they have a visual on you, you are not more visible, nor safer than the guy with a stock pipe.

Has it never happened to you, that you hear something really loud driving a car, but until you see it, you are nervous about which direction the sound comes from .... ask fire truck drivers, why people do not always move to the side. sometimes if you cannot see them their loud horn means nothing.
 
tricky said:
Makes sense.. my bike is pretty quite under around 5-6k rpm, so if I'm in an uncomfortable situation surrounded by cars, I'll drop it down a gear so they can hear me. I also try to pass cars and trucks quickly, I don't like hanging around beside them or in their blind spot.

I heard the safest speed for bikes to be going is slightly faster than everyone else, which sounds right. It keeps you fresh, out of blind spots and the like. If you get bored, your mind starts to wander.. then trouble
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Be careful with that.

Cars are really well insulated for sound nowadays, deaf people are allowed to drive, and other bikers can't hear you over the wind shear.

Someone may get to a stop, look and mix you in with all the traffic behind, they may then decide to pull out quickly to stay slightly ahead of said traffic. That's why you can't let your mind wander.
 
mxs said:
The drivers are just spinning their head left and right trying to locate you. until they have a visual on you, you are not more visible, nor safer than the guy with a stock pipe.

Has it never happened to you, that you hear something really loud driving a car, but until you see it, you are nervous about which direction the sound comes from .... ask fire truck drivers, why people do not always move to the side. sometimes if you cannot see them their loud horn means nothing.
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Aren't low frequencies omnidirectional and hard to pin down? ie Subwoofers. Quieter cars, ear buds, radio all making it worse.

Be quiet and they're sorry they killed you or be loud and they're not sorry they killed you. Lose / lose situation.
 
Drivers that don't see motorcycles fail to do so not because bikes are small, or because bikes are not a common vehicle on our roads, or because of road conditions and other nonsense excuses. The one and only reason they don't see us is because they are TERRIBLE drivers, that don't have even the most basic driving skills.
Therefore there isn't a thing any one of us can do to make them notice us, the only thing we can do is ride defensively and ride with "fight for survival" mindset every time your *** is on the bike.
 
Both in Toronto where drivers are erratic, and in Florida where senile drivers are abundant, I try to increase my visibility by changing direction a bit, swapping from one part of my lane to another, and rocking the throttle to rock my headlight. These tactics work for me, because I have escaped drivers' notice only three times that mattered, and all three of those were before 1970.

I will keep doing these things, and perhaps survive for a while.
 
you have a much higher chance of being seen when you are moving with respect to what the drivers are seeing. I.e. moving towards them you may be invisible, but moving sideways or weaving will be more likely to grab their attention.

its like how you can't see a fly on a table until it starts to fly away.
 
There's a few threads here that link to articles that mention lateral movement approaching an intersection -
 
I once spoke to a cop who did accident investigations, and I'm 100% sure he would agree with the "false positive" theory proposed by the OP. He told me that in many of the car vs bike crashes he responded to, that the car driver didnt at all see the bike, while knowing that they were looking in that direction. Often the biker reported looking directly into the eyes of the driver prior to them making their action. He too theorized that since driver's ed makes no special mention of paying attention to bikes ("watch out for cars, watch out for trucks, watch out for people") that typically trained drivers are just unaware of what to look for.

The reason why hi-viz stuff might be effective in alerting others to your presence may not have that much to do with the fact you look like a glow stick. We are trained to watch out for police and road workers, who wear these colours, so our minds know to pay special attention to it. As such, when a driver's eyes catch the bright colour, they automatically enter a mode of caution. This is, thankfully, unlikely to change, as people will no matter what be keen to cops and road workers, so bikers will just reap the benefit.
 
I don't mean to thread-jack or anything but last summer there was talk about a 'remember to keep an eye out for riders' awareness ride at the beggining of the 2012 riding season. Is anyone still kicking that idea around? I fully realize that I am wholly responsible for making sure that I am seen and I NEVER rely on a driver to watch out for me, but it can't hurt........right???
 
I think the biggest problem is peoples selfish attitude, they are the only ones that count, the are the only ones that matter, they drive distracted because they must pick up that "important" phone call, they will drive that way because "they" must get there faster.

People are so self centered on their own life that they bring that attitude on the road, unfortunately we are the ones that pay for it.

Until people drive while paying attention, become courteous on the road and don't put themselves before others by been considerate nothing will change.

Unfortunately peoples attitudes are becoming worse and worse and so is their driving.
 
The Road Warrior said:
Drivers that don't see motorcycles fail to do so not because bikes are small, or because bikes are not a common vehicle on our roads, or because of road conditions and other nonsense excuses. The one and only reason they don't see us is because they are TERRIBLE drivers, that don't have even the most basic driving skills.
Therefore there isn't a thing any one of us can do to make them notice us, the only thing we can do is ride defensively and ride with "fight for survival" mindset every time your *** is on the bike.
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I actually agree with this 100%
 
The Road Warrior said:
Drivers that don't see motorcycles fail to do so not because bikes are small, or because bikes are not a common vehicle on our roads, or because of road conditions and other nonsense excuses. The one and only reason they don't see us is because they are TERRIBLE drivers, that don't have even the most basic driving skills.
Therefore there isn't a thing any one of us can do to make them notice us, the only thing we can do is ride defensively and ride with "fight for survival" mindset every time your *** is on the bike.
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You say "they" as if every single driver that's ever overlooked anything on the road is a TERRIBLE driver. That's complete nonsense. Do YOU see everything on the road when you're driving? I suppose you've never hit a pot hole before either because you see every one of those, too?

It's completely asinine to blame the conscious for something that the subconscious may be responsible for. Unless of course your argument is that we never make subconscious decisions...
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