The science of SMIDSY - the real reason why other road users don't see you.

[RonK]

Every road user should read this.

A fighter pilot's guide to surviving on the roads.

[redsonic]

Thanks for linking the article- a great read

[queequeg]

Every road user should read this.

A fighter pilot's guide to surviving on the roads.

It's pretty accurate, especially since I have learned to fly (although have not been up in almost 20 years). I was/am aerobatic rated, and the exact scenarios he desribes are spot on. You develop a new method of scanning the skies for conflicts, as VFR (Visual FLight Rules) is all about "See and Avoid". Easier said than done sometimes, with planes having three dimensions to deal with, and no roads (separation is roughly by flying at staggered intervals based on compass heading, so in theory planes flying on opposing headings should have vertical separation...but that does rely on both pilots following established practice (and it's not always possible due to weather, terrain or operational considerations).

Personally, I don't think enough (or in fact any of it!) is taught to new drivers. Since there is no syllabus for learning how to drive, and mum & dad are not likely to pass it on, the vast bulk of drivers out there are accidents waiting to happen. I was lucky, I learned to drive only from an instructor, and he was very big on situtional awareness. Once I had mastered the physical operation of the vehicle, I served out my remaining mandatory time on my L's just driving around with the instructor and him putting me into increasingly complicated environments. He'd routinely cover the rear vision mirror with his hand and ask me what colour the car behind us was, or the one in the left/right blindspot (sometimes there would be no car there and he'd be trying to trick me). If I failed, I had to pay him an extra dollar for the lesson. You learn very quickly to be constantly scanning, much like in the cockpit of a plane.

One of the concepts I was taught when flying was that your brain needs to be ahead of the aircraft. Do not fly anywhere that your brain has not been 2 minutes ago. That's because everything is happening so fast. At 120kts you are moving at 2nm a minute (~3.6km), so while you fumble about in the cockpit you can miss quite a lot, and that is a low performance single engine aircraft!

It's the same with driving. If you are coming to traffic lights that are green, and you are 200m out going 80km/h, you need to plan ahead. What happens if they turn orange right now, in 50m, in 100m? How quickly can I stop, what's my point of no return? You need to have made that decision before you get anywhere near the lights.
Same with side streets, merge lanes, roundabouts...pretty much everything. You are constantly running "What If" scenarios. One big one when I was learning to fly (single engine) was "what happens if my engine stops right now"?

I think there is a large chunk of the population that are not suited to driving, but we give them a licence anyway because they showed that they could change gears and reverse park.

[ColinOldnCranky]

Ever wondered how those tiredness sensors that are appearing in cars work? A scanner tracks your saccades and tries to make sense of them.

Saccades can be affected by tiredness. I understand that low sugar levels also affect them.

[RobertL]

The one that really annoys me is the "blind spot" caused by the vehicle's A pillars. It's just taken for granted that vehicles have this blind spot and that sometimes other vehicles get hidden by it. Then there's a crash - Oops! It was my blind spot!!

There's no expectation on the driver that they will do whatever it takes to make sure that they check that blind spot. It's not hard to lean forwards, or lean left or right a bit, to check that blind spot. But the system is based around the fact that people won't do that.

[find_bruce]

I have no doubt there are genuine cases where a driver looked & didn't see a cyclist. In many instances however it is just an excuse to cover up the fact that the driver either didn't look or completely misjudged how far away the cyclist was.

Anywhere you cross an exit to a petrol station, the vast majority of drivers will look to their right at the other cars coming and will start to move before looking in front of their car, let alone looking to the left. When all you can see is the back of the drivers head, you know they haven't "seen" you.

[queequeg]

The one that really annoys me is the "blind spot" caused by the vehicle's A pillars. It's just taken for granted that vehicles have this blind spot and that sometimes other vehicles get hidden by it. Then there's a crash - Oops! It was my blind spot!!

There's no expectation on the driver that they will do whatever it takes to make sure that they check that blind spot. It's not hard to lean forwards, or lean left or right a bit, to check that blind spot. But the system is based around the fact that people won't do that.

My wife's car is far newer than mine, and includes all sorts of safety gizmos. One of the features is that it has sensors in the wing mirrors to look for cars in the blind spots. If there is a car there, it lights up a picture in the mirror to show there is a car in your blind spot. Further to that, if while it "sees" a car there, you then then indicate an intention to turn that way, a loud warning sounds in the car. Of course, this only works if you indicate before actually turning/changing lanes. I know some people struggle with that when driving.

One thing that annoys me is when entering road from a side street, and selfish people have parked their cars right up to the corner, making it physically impossible to see what is approaching without sticking your car out into the traffic and hoping there isn't a truck coming. You therefore have to inch yourself out until you can see (I lean forward over the steering wheel). I don't have this issue as much in my wife's car as she drives a Santa Fe which has a nice high driving position, and you can see over the roof of a standard sedan (well, I can..my wife can't because she's short...which is why she likes the SUV)

[Trevtassie]

I reckon every new driver should be made to ride a 50cc scooter for the first year. It'd sharpen up their road craft skills for sure...

[RobertL]

I reckon every new driver should be made to ride a 50cc scooter for the first year. It'd sharpen up their road craft skills for sure...

My father got his licence in the UK in the early 60s. He says that back then, you could get a motorbike licence a year before you could get a car licence (age 16 vs 17, I believe). He reckons that spending 12 months on a motorbike taught a lot of young testosterone-riddled blokes to be more cautious and polite. He especially recommends going through two UK winters on an underpowered motorbike to teach people to pull their heads in.

[warthog1]

Riding a motorcycle, particularly an underpowered one may well make people safer drivers.
As the parent of 2 teenagers on L plates currently I would not like to see it.
As an ex motorcycle rider, with a stint as a courier in Melbourne, I am not encouraging motorcycle use to them at all.
I am discouraging it.
I am well aware how dangerous it is, largely due to driver behaviour.
Selfish I know, but I prefer to eliminate risk in their lives rather than introduce it.

[antigee]

I have no doubt there are genuine cases where a driver looked & didn't see a cyclist. In many instances however it is just an excuse to cover up the fact that the driver either didn't look or completely misjudged how far away the cyclist was.

Anywhere you cross an exit to a petrol station, the vast majority of drivers will look to their right at the other cars coming and will start to move before looking in front of their car, let alone looking to the left. When all you can see is the back of the drivers head, you know they haven't "seen" you.

"misjudged how far away the cyclist was"....as a relatively slow cyclist surprised to have been told on quite a few occasions when I bothered to waste my time catching and attempting to vilify an errant driver that they "didn't realise how fast I was going"

"the vast majority of drivers will look to their right at the other cars coming and will start to move before looking in front of their car, let alone looking to the left"

[anecdote]used to live opposite a bus stop and drivers would turn left to join a busy commuter road without checking left and drive straight into the back of a stopped bus...happened enough times that eventually the bus stop got moved[/anecdote]

[brumby33]

Every road user should read this.

A fighter pilot's guide to surviving on the roads.

It's pretty accurate, especially since I have learned to fly (although have not been up in almost 20 years). I was/am aerobatic rated, and the exact scenarios he desribes are spot on. You develop a new method of scanning the skies for conflicts, as VFR (Visual FLight Rules) is all about "See and Avoid". Easier said than done sometimes, with planes having three dimensions to deal with, and no roads (separation is roughly by flying at staggered intervals based on compass heading, so in theory planes flying on opposing headings should have vertical separation...but that does rely on both pilots following established practice (and it's not always possible due to weather, terrain or operational considerations).

Personally, I don't think enough (or in fact any of it!) is taught to new drivers. Since there is no syllabus for learning how to drive, and mum & dad are not likely to pass it on, the vast bulk of drivers out there are accidents waiting to happen. I was lucky, I learned to drive only from an instructor, and he was very big on situtional awareness. Once I had mastered the physical operation of the vehicle, I served out my remaining mandatory time on my L's just driving around with the instructor and him putting me into increasingly complicated environments. He'd routinely cover the rear vision mirror with his hand and ask me what colour the car behind us was, or the one in the left/right blindspot (sometimes there would be no car there and he'd be trying to trick me). If I failed, I had to pay him an extra dollar for the lesson. You learn very quickly to be constantly scanning, much like in the cockpit of a plane.

One of the concepts I was taught when flying was that your brain needs to be ahead of the aircraft. Do not fly anywhere that your brain has not been 2 minutes ago. That's because everything is happening so fast. At 120kts you are moving at 2nm a minute (~3.6km), so while you fumble about in the cockpit you can miss quite a lot, and that is a low performance single engine aircraft!

It's the same with driving. If you are coming to traffic lights that are green, and you are 200m out going 80km/h, you need to plan ahead. What happens if they turn orange right now, in 50m, in 100m? How quickly can I stop, what's my point of no return? You need to have made that decision before you get anywhere near the lights.
Same with side streets, merge lanes, roundabouts...pretty much everything. You are constantly running "What If" scenarios. One big one when I was learning to fly (single engine) was "what happens if my engine stops right now"?

I think there is a large chunk of the population that are not suited to driving, but we give them a licence anyway because they showed that they could change gears and reverse park.

Agree with pretty much all you said Queequeg, I too learnt to fly a single engine aerobatic plane (which unfortunately ended up in the Clarence river in Grafton) back in the early to mid 80's, it was some of the best times of my life back then and yes a lot of people aren't taught or don't practice escape routes or what-if's if it suddenly goes pear shaped. I often used to take off from a grass strip in South Grafton and head East over residential property in South Grafton whereas in the shoulder seasons we took off towards the West where there was mainly swampy grounds and was relatively bare, the air strip was only 1050 mtrs long, grass and if heading East, you immediately fly over a main road so you've gotta make sure you're well and truly airbourne by the taxiway otherwise you could end up clipping a semi trailer as it's going past.
I've often thought of that and in the crazy heat of Summer when the air is thin and lift is hard to come by, if you had an engine failure on take off, you could be in all sorts of poo.
But generally by the time we pass the threshold heading East we are at least 250-300 feet up. I even drove my car towards where we fly over so that if the engine ever clapped out during the climb, where the hell could I land without killing myself and others, checking where the powerlines cross the roads, bridges, intersections etc.
Driving a public bus in Sydney is not much different, we have many people's safety in our hands and even though we don't move that fast, we could be doing the posted speed limit in some cases and even though the Driver has his seat belt on, the passengers don't have any seatbelts and any sudden braking can throw people out of their seat in an instant, so whilst we approach traffic lights, we have to assume that these lights are going to change before we get to them and prepare for this and sometimes it's not possible and in many cases it's safer to go through just as it's hitting red to save our passengers from serious injury even if we get stung by a camera, I've had to make that decision on many occasions as 4 seconds is often not enough for a heavy vehicle even at 50kph. The inertia of a fully braking bus trying to pull up over 15 tonnes plus is quite considerable. If we break down we just stop and hit the hazard lights, if a plane breaks down you've only got one chance and as you said, I don't believe many have that ability or skill to make those decisions in a real life situation and too many people rely too much on the technology of their vehicles to get themselves out of trouble.

cheers

brumby33

[queequeg]

Driving a public bus in Sydney is not much different, we have many people's safety in our hands and even though we don't move that fast, we could be doing the posted speed limit in some cases and even though the Driver has his seat belt on, the passengers don't have any seatbelts and any sudden braking can throw people out of their seat in an instant, so whilst we approach traffic lights, we have to assume that these lights are going to change before we get to them and prepare for this and sometimes it's not possible and in many cases it's safer to go through just as it's hitting red to save our passengers from serious injury even if we get stung by a camera, I've had to make that decision on many occasions as 4 seconds is often not enough for a heavy vehicle even at 50kph. The inertia of a fully braking bus trying to pull up over 15 tonnes plus is quite considerable. If we break down we just stop and hit the hazard lights, if a plane breaks down you've only got one chance and as you said, I don't believe many have that ability or skill to make those decisions in a real life situation and too many people rely too much on the technology of their vehicles to get themselves out of trouble.

Yes, I think a lot of drivers also forget that a bus or a truck can't stop as quickly as them, and they do stupid things like cut in front of them, then the light changes organise and they hit the brakes hard and the truck behind them jack knifes.
Commuting home on the bike one night, I was waiting as a crossing (where I'd pressed the button) and there was a truck and car approaching the lights I was waiting at. The lights changed orange (so I would get the green bicycle next), and my spidey sense was tingling because the truck was trvalling very quick, and the driver had just changed lanes in front of it when the lights changed orange. She stopped, the truck was never going to stop. The pedestrian light turned green, but I held back...and just as well, because the truck went into the back of her car like a freight train and catapulted it 75m down the road. I thought I was going to find a dead person, but she didn't have a scratch on her. The rear of her was a pancake though.

If you can believe it, the driver of the truck was under instruction at the time, and I spoke to his instructor and he saud "I told him that if the lights changed Orange and that car stops, you are going right over the top of them"...well, he was spot on! I stayed with the young girl for an hour waiting for a tow truck. The truck didn't have a scratch on it. I made sure they exchanged details and made sure the girl was ok.

My driving instructor was a task master, always getting me thinking a long way ahead and giving me those "What if's" to think about, and I am thankful for that. There are some truly clueless and scary drivers out there, as a quick viewing of the Dashcam Owners Australia site will show. I sometimes wonder how these people function at life, let alone driving.

[brumby33]

Will it ever come a time when in order for people to keep their licence current they must be retested every 5-10 years. In order to hold a forklift or other machinery licence, you must pass a competency test and that's not even on the road in most cases and other machinery like on road work sites, these licences are through the work cover department just as forklift licences are, so why not drivers licences? Even if it's just a knowledge test as I reckon most wouldn't pass that either.

Once people have their driver licence, unless they lose it through points or other misdomeanors, they've got it for life, or at least till they are 85 yrs of age where they have to do a driver competency test to keep it.

When holiday periods are here and even when the Government places Double demerit points for that period, the amount of people who get done for speeding, done for DUI or drug tests is incredible, it's as if people just say F the rules!!

The amount of accidents that happen on any given day, when cars are at their most safest specs ever, people are still wiping themselves out on the roads....cyclists have got no hope with the mentality of Australian drivers. Perhaps there must be a maturity test before anyone can even hold their L's.

Cheers

brumby33

[zebee]

[anecdote]used to live opposite a bus stop and drivers would turn left to join a busy commuter road without checking left and drive straight into the back of a stopped bus...happened enough times that eventually the bus stop got moved[/anecdote]

I was knocked over on a zebra crossing by such behaviour.

OK, bloody stupid road design: side street at T junction to main road, zebra crossing across side street at intersection. So cars creep up their front wheels over the crossing and gun it when they see a gap in the main road, never looking at the crossing.

I looked at the main road traffic, figured there was no gap and it was safe to cross. Driver had a smaller gap threshold than I did and hit me.

[RonK]

I was knocked over on a zebra crossing by such behaviour.

OK, bloody stupid road design: side street at T junction to main road, zebra crossing across side street at intersection. So cars creep up their front wheels over the crossing and gun it when they see a gap in the main road, never looking at the crossing.

I looked at the main road traffic, figured there was no gap and it was safe to cross. Driver had a smaller gap threshold than I did and hit me.

And then he said: sorry mate I didn't see you.

Returning to the subject, if the driver did look quickly to the left it's quite likely a stationary pedestrian would be passed over by a saccade and would have been invisible.

[Comedian]

I'm afraid that I will forever remain convinced that a significant portion (exactly what we will never know) of SMIDSY accidents are simply a case of driver nails cyclist.. cops turn up and say "how did this happen"... driver tries to think of something that will help him/her get off and splutters.. "sorry I didn't see him". Cop then pats the driver on the back and says "I know mate they are hard to spot sometimes" and then both have a little nervous laugh and that's the end of it. Strangely.. it seems that in Australia that absolves the driver of all responsibility.

It then gets written up as "Driver failed to see cyclists" and so it goes into the crash report and gets reported etc etc. And then we get all the stuff that cyclists should wear visible colours etc etc etc..

In my time on the roads basically all the negative interactions I've had with cars have been drivers seeing me and just NGAF.. or deciding to give me a near death as a thrill.

I'm also sure there is an element of out group psychology - where drivers will try and defend other drivers for their actions and this is a convenient out.

There have only been a couple of memorable occasions when I thought "That driver had NO idea I was there". So it does happen - but very very rarely in my experience.

EDIT: I thought of saying "Not being seen is not something I worry about" but then I realise I do worry about it. But only in the context of distracted driving. IE people looking at their phones and not around. In which case there isn't really anything I can do other than trying to minimise the amount of time where I am vulnerable.

[DavidS]

The number of drivers who fail to look ahead or look to the section of road they are about to enter is ridiculous. Accidents like that should lead to loss of licence.

Brumby, I totally understand what you are saying, you should try the same with a 50 tonne tram. I used to drive them many years ago, wow, the things idiots do in front of trams is truly astounding. It certainly trains you to drive many cars ahead and notice everything. Then again, cycling teaches similar lessons.

Comedian, you are right, most drivers who don't see a bicyle did not look. I have driven for well over 3 decades and only once have I missed a vehicle when I actually looked (Harley, blended so well into the background, also was in my first year of driving). It really isn't rocket science: don't assume - look!

DS

[zebee]

Some "not seeing" is "not expecting to see". I once was taking my normal back road route to work on my motorcycle. Come up to a give way sign where I was going to turn right. Look both ways, nothing moving same as always, that street was dead quiet at that time of day.

So I moved into the intersection... and the bike's brakes came on hard!

Just after I was shocked by the bike stopping, I saw the car coming from my right.

No, the motorcycle wasn't sentient, but my hindbrain had more self preservation than the nut holding the handlebars did. The light must have bounced off that car and into my retinas but my processing equipment filtered it out because "there's never any cars here". The hindbrain wasn't having that and put the brakes on in spite of the forebrain.

I can still remember the utter shock. Not the shock of the suddenly appearing car but the shock of the bike's brakes engaging without "me" being involved.

If I had been in a car and the oncoming had been a two wheeler I don't think the hindbrain would have bothered.

About a week later I was a passenger in my housemate's car taking the same route. I saw to our left a bright yellow panel van with its headlights on. My housemate looked at it and moved out causing me to yelp and the van to sound the horn. "Where did he come from?" "He's been there all the time". That might have been a saccade but more likely it was the same expectation problem.

[brumby33]

Like when a motorist is blind rotten drunk and can't see anything properly and hits and kills 4 kids (7 kids in total) on bicycles as he's leaving his waterhole. Hopefully his SMIDSY will land him in the Klinksy for a very long time.

[AUbicycles]

I wonder whether or how this can be used by street planners. I like the implications for drivers licensing and agree that the road rules are crucial theory but this psychology gives drivers an advantage.

Working against this is laziness and ignorance... so even when it is known, choosing to be reckless creates the risk.

In this respect, even when a bike rider is not at fault, it again confirms that the more a bike rider can do to mitigate risk, the better.

On the cycling advocacy side, we still have to be careful that the lawmakers do not put the onus on bike riders (e.g. regulate high vis) for driver at fault collisions. Safety mechanisms such as high-vis or bike lights are never a total solution for all situations, but I feel that encouraging riders to be visible is useful.