Motion Camoflage and SMIDSY!

[jambo]

Am reading march Bike! magazine, page 29 has an article on motion camoflage.

Basically the principle goes thus: The human brain sees everything in terms of "background" and "moving objects" if you are moving directly at someone against a static background the brain sees you as a static object untill you suddenly "loom" in the last few meters by getting a lot bigger very quickly. At this point the motion camoflage is broken and the car driver becomes aware of you. The fight or flight reaction kicks in and they freeze for a seccond or so, stopping dead in the road and you hit them. They then honestly look at you and say "Sorry Mate I Didn't See You"

So how do we help, well the best thing is to stay on the right side of the road approaching a left turn so you are traveling on a line not directly at the driver but to an angle to them, the other thing is to put on a gentle weave. if you shift the angle you're traveling at them this beaks up the motin camoflage and they see you earlier. Obviously weaving down the road is not advisable but putting a kink in the angle you approach may help.

Course slowing down and assuming all car drivers are going to pull out in front of you is always good advice

I've learned a bit about MPEG compression where only moving obtions are redrawn to make low file size movies so the brain definatly interprets "motion" and "background". Any thoughts?

With so many potential hazards on the road youd be weaving around like a maniac! Seriously though, anything that helps car drivers spot you makes good sense - im up for working it into my riding style.

And then mr policeman says " Excuse me sir, riding very erratically aren't we?" Cue breath test, taking papers down to station........

Also i don't quite see how the theory works. The triangle drawn worked on the principle that if you travel down the drivers line of sight they will not be able to see you and you will therefore 'blend in' to the background. Out of interest how many people on this site when they see a car at a side junction drift over towards to the car as they get closer to it? I would imagine the answer is nobody so i don't see how awareness of this is going to reduce accidents.

Its good to see people are working on ways to reduce the number of accidents though.

I can see the principle, but I always try to be really carefull at junctions anyhow. Get eye contact with the driver or make sure you look at their eyes to see if they have seen you.

[jambo]

Originally Posted by steveo

I would imagine the answer is nobody so i don't see how awareness of this is going to reduce accidents.

I guess compressing a 4 page article with pictures and diagrams into a pragraph doesn't do it much justice

It just intrested me as I hadn't thought about it in this light. As I said, don't go weaving about all over the road but if you're not sure someone's seen you changing your lane position might help. This is fairly new research and not intended as a "how to stop all smidsy incedents" just a point on why it may happen

Originally Posted by Scoobs

I can see the principle, but I always try to be really carefull at junctions anyhow. Get eye contact with the driver or make sure you look at their eyes to see if they have seen you.

Scoobs, that really is some of the best advice ive heard in a while. It always helps to try and guage if the car driver has 'clocked' you and the bike.
On another point, sad as it is, Are those the lyrics to a The The track on the Infected album, or am i going mad?!

I think I'd be more interested to know how often people on here get people pulling out on them, and more importantly, what were the circumstances.

I've only had 2 cases in 8,000 miles of peoples blindness being potentialy very close to having me off.

First was going down a rather wide, straight highstreet and someone came out from a road on the right into my path. Can't really comprehend how he didn't see me.

Second was a woman turning right in front of me onto the derestricted road I was on. Could have been nasty as I was doing 70mph.

Both were in daylight.

Some of the strangest incidents I've seen have been when riding in a group; how can a road user not see one bike in the middle of a group of 20 bikes ?

[Balky001]

surely if you have your headlight on then any suspension movement will make it appear to flicker and you would be visable as it is breaking up the motion? Well, when I say visible, I mean visable to those who bother to look at all. Personally, I hire a lad to walk in front of the bike waving a big red flag. It seems to work but have difficulting getting him to run above 60mph!

Flamin Squirrel. I think that you have been very lucky then.
The majority of car drivers are oblivious to what is going on around them.
If i didn't ride a bike, I would probably be the same. Its tough out there.