Motorcycle Safety [why drivers don't see motorcycles]

Follow any motorcycle forum and sooner or later a posting will show up about how some idiot cager (auto driver) pulled right in front of a biker and cut them off or worse yet, caused an accident or injury. Invariably the report will have verbiage such as, "they looked right at me and pulled out". Then consensus then becomes that the cagers don't care about the bikers. I don't think that's true. Consider the following explanation:

Several decades ago there was this great article in the U.S. Naval Aviation Safety Magazine about why pilots forget to put the landing gear down. Even with all the warning equipment, checklists, and even co-pilot backup, it continues to happen. So much so that, even today, every attended airport has a spotter in the tower to check that the landing gear is down as the airplane approaches.

What this article concluded was that the aircrew was focusing on an "unsafe" indication. So when the checklist comes to "gear down and locked?" the pilot looks at the gear indicator. This indicator has 3 states, up/down/unsafe. Unsafe (a barber pole) is shown when it is transitioning between up and down. The pilot DOESN'T see a barber pole and proceeds.

I've compared this to vehicles and I think it accounts for most of the things we see all the time. Drivers are looking for other CARs. The don't see a car and proceed. This explains how folks can pull out in front of pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, trucks, fire engines, or anything. It's not that they don't see these things it's that they don't register.

You can research this yourself and find all kinds of reports of this phenomenon.

Look at your own behavior and make sure you're not doing it too. I know I've had to consciously raise my awareness of pedestrians. I've caught myself a couple of times not noticing them as I was making a right on red.

Be safe out there.