in message <[email hidden]>,
crabsallover (') said:BeSeenOnABike claim that in some accidents involving cyclists being hit
by motorists, the cyclist is the Unexpected Event. Because the motorist
suffers from Inattentional Blindness the motorist never sees the
cyclist! A cyclist wearing normal dark clothes may be not be visible to
a motorist (the cyclist is an Unexpected Event). By wearing bright
fluorescent clothing or other fluorescent gadgets rather than dark
clothes, the motorist attends to the cyclist - and sees him! Maybe a
fluorescent smiley could actually save lives!
Sorry to be very nit-picky, but is there any evidence of this? I thought
what the Unexpected Event research showed was, that no matter how
bizarre, obvious and attention grabbing the Unexpected Event was,
it /still/ didn't get noticed (example being the experiment where an
adult gorilla walked through the room where the experiment was being
conducted, and most of the experimental subjects did not recall seeing
anything unusual at all).
If this is so, and if cyclists really are Unexpected Events, then frankly
wearing a bright fluorescent clown suit with a flashing red nose isn't
going to make any difference.
--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
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