Smidsy & the Invisible Gorilla

Some bikers believe that some car drivers deliberately drive out of side roads directly into the bikes path causing a crash in which the biker invariably come off worst.

In fact this type of accident is so common that bikers have a name for it. They call it a smidsy (Sorry Mate, I Didn't See You)

Of course the drivers don't do it deliberately, so why does it happen so often? And what has the SMIDSY got to do with the invisible gorilla?

If you don't know about the invisible gorilla it was an amazing experiment by two psychologists. Subjects were asked to view a short video of a basketball game and count the number of passes made by one team.

They were then asked if they saw anything unusual - many, about half, said NO.

They were amazed when told that during the game a gorilla had walked onto the pitch, turned and faced the camera, thumped it's chest, then walked off! Why did so many people not see the gorilla?

This, and some other observations of interest to all road users, and particularly motorcyclists, is explained in the first chapter of the book "The Invisible Gorilla And Other Ways Our Intuition Deceives Us" by Christopher Chablis and Daniel Simons.

The psychologists proved something they called "inattentional blindness" which we are all capable of. About half the subjects in each experiment, including in some cases looking directly at it for a full second, simply did not see the gorilla!

This experiment has since become famous in psychology terms and has been repeated many times, always with the same result. About half the time people just have a mental blindness for something they are sure they would have noticed.

Furthermore the subject's age, sex, ethnicity etc. made no difference.

On reviewing the video they simply could not believe they missed the gorilla on the first viewing and one man even accused the psychologists of switching the tapes!

What it boils down to is this:

1. People notice what they expect to see
2. The majority of car drivers don't expect to see motorbikes
3. People are more susceptible to inattentional blindness when they're attending to some other task

The authors go on to challenge the effectiveness of current advice by road safety professionals on conspicuous kit. Citing a further experiment (the red gorilla) which indicates that wearing conspicuous clothing does not overcome inattentional blindness. Conspicuous bikes and clothing, they suggest, mostly makes bikers easier to spot by people who DO expect to see them.

This rings true to me as police riders have told me that they are very aware that some drivers completely fail to see them on full liveried brightly coloured bikes, wearing full yellow jackets, white helmets, all lights on - yes including the blue ones!

What can riders do? It seems that if we can make our bikes mimic the visual cues of cars, that could help people to see us. The authors suggest side by side headlamps as wide apart as possible may help. Come to think of it, I may have seen moves in this direction by certain bike manufacturers in recent years. You can also use the police advanced techniques which you learn on my SortedRide courses to enhance your safety.

What can drivers do? Well firstly they have to know about the invisible gorilla (maybe you could spread the word and help let more drivers know about it? ) then they will be able to decide for themselves that it makes sense before emerging every time to, LOOK FOR THE GORILLA oh, and the motorcyclist!