James Annan said:dirtylitterboxofferingstospammers wrote:
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:The theme for next year is "light" so I've been putting my thinking cap on.
Quoted message said:Why not a demonstration of the magic whereby a cyclist becomes wholly invisible the moment they put
on bright yellow flourescent clothing.
It's called selective attention. Bright clothing is irrelevant. There's an entertaining gorilla
video in various forms which demonstrates this. The video is of several people in a close group
tossing a couple of large balls between each other. You're asked to do something like count the
passes. While you're doing this someone in a gorilla suit walks right in front of the camera, jumps
about beating his chest, and walks off. Most people when asked afterwards never noticved the
gorilla, and feel awful fools when they watch it again and can't help seeing the gorilla.
Tests with motorcyclists on what was the brightest most noticeable kind of clothing found that the
important thing isn't how bright and garish and illuminated you are, what matters is how closely you
resemble a policeman on a motorcycle, because drivers *are* attuned to keeping an eye out for them.
The problem with folk who don't see cyclists is that they don't care. It's not a problem of
visibility, it's a problem of caring and selective attention.
This is also demonstrated by those places where the practice of assuming by default that drivers are
at fault in car/bike accidents is instigated. This has always resulted in an immediate dramatic drop
in car/bike accients.
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Chris Malcolm [email hidden] +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205 IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's
Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK ["]http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]