Looked but didn't see

[MikeF]

Yesterday I was going uphill on a rural B road at about 5-6mph. The bus in front of me had stopped and pulled away from a stop. Several people alighted including a man who wanted to cross the road. He looked right and left and then right again and then stepped out in front of me. I had to brake quite sharply even at that speed. My only conclusion was that he was looking for cars (and there weren't any) and perhaps his eye sight was bad or failing. Lucky I wasn't cycling the other way!

[Cugel]

Yesterday I was going uphill on a rural B road at about 5-6mph. The bus in front of me had stopped and pulled away from a stop. Several people alighted including a man who wanted to cross the road. He looked right and left and then right again and then stepped out in front of me. I had to brake quite sharply even at that speed. My only conclusion was that he was looking for cars (and there weren't any) and perhaps his eye sight was bad or failing. Lucky I wasn't cycling the other way!

There have been many vaguely scientific (by which I mean by-psychologists) investigations of the human perceptions and their constituent parts. A simplified conclusion is that only 10% of a human's inner perception (what they see, smell, hear and - most importantly - believe) is constituted by the nerve impulses from eyes, ears, nose, skin et al. The rest is made up of culturally-induced expectations, which include not just expected things but not-expected things. An enormous amount of synaptic processing is done upon the little bits of nerve impulse.

Thus your ex-passenger from the bus expects to see and apprehend danger from cars, lorries and perhaps a runaway horse. He has no experience of slow-speed bicycles so doesn't see one, any more than he sees the bad fairy about to give him an embarrassing itch along with the compulsion to scratch at it in public.

We humans are queer things and rather solipsistic (in the weak sense). Just ask Michel Foucault.

Cugel

[oneten]

What my wife would call 'a man look' but applies equally to both genders! I'm amazed by the number of people who step out and cross quieter streets without even looking over their shoulder first and I assume this is because they don't hear evidence of a vehicle approaching - just as well it will soon be mandatory for electric cars to be fitted with an audible warning device by law.

[thirdcrank]

IIRC, in the days of buses with an open platform at the back for passengers getting on and off, the HC or possibly Roadcraft advised that passengers standing on the platform probably meant the bus was about to stop.

The current version has this advice:

Rule 223

Buses, coaches and trams. Give priority to these vehicles when you can do so safely, especially when they signal to pull away from stops. Look out for people getting off a bus or tram and crossing the road.

[[XAP]Bob]

What my wife would call 'a man look' but applies equally to both genders! I'm amazed by the number of people who step out and cross quieter streets without even looking over their shoulder first and I assume this is because they don't hear evidence of a vehicle approaching - just as well it will soon be mandatory for electric cars to be fitted with an audible warning device by law.

No. It should not be mandatory to make noise... there are enough vehicles that are silent that people will just have to learn to cross...
There may be an arguement for having absolute priority to any pedestrian with a white cane...

[peetee]

Are electric cars that quiet? I live on a 30mph main thoroughfare and can't distinguish what powers most vehicles. It has seemed to me for decades now that, for vehicles travelling at a constant speed, the greater proportion of noise is created by tyres. As a cyclist, din from passing traffic can be quite uncomfortable at times, especially low profile tyres not yet up to working temperature on a cold road surface.

[Username]

Are electric cars that quiet? I live on a 30mph main thoroughfare and can't distinguish what powers most vehicles. It has seemed to me for decades now that, for vehicles travelling at a constant speed, the greater proportion of noise is created by tyres. As a cyclist, din from passing traffic can be quite uncomfortable at times, especially low profile tyres not yet up to working temperature on a cold road surface.

This. Listen to traffic on a nearby motorway (not congested). Its not engines you hear apart from the odd motorist giving his Lambo or Busa the beans. A lone electric car on a country road may catch people out tho.

[brooksby]

I followed a small electric car this morning: a bmw i3. When it pulled away from a stop it sounded like an old skool milk float, once it was moving it was practically silent.

[althebike]

I was cycling yesterday and nearly pulled out of a T junction into a bike. I looked left, clear, looked right, clear, started to pull out and the bike was in front of me, the one place I did not focus properly. We were a long way from colliding, but it did hopefully teach me a lesson. A car driver doing the same thing could have much worse consequences.

[thirdcrank]

... No. It should not be mandatory to make noise... there are enough vehicles that are silent that people will just have to learn to cross...

Something I first saw in Private Eye: At Jelsum in The Netherlands they installed a musical road surface which playes the local anthem De Alde Friezen as traffic passes over it, so long as it's going at the "right" speed. Bits of it sound like Ilkla Moor Bar t'hat



https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2018/04/m ... al-anthem/

[Cugel]

... No. It should not be mandatory to make noise... there are enough vehicles that are silent that people will just have to learn to cross...

Something I first saw in Private Eye: At Jelsum in The Netherlands they installed a musical road surface which playes the local anthem De Alde Friezen as traffic passes over it, so long as it's going at the "right" speed. Bits of it sound like Ilkla Moor Bar t'hat



https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2018/04/m ... al-anthem/

It's sensible to listen for a car, especially when exiting the side road of a T-junction on to a faster stretch with bends obscuring your view. One worries that the quiet electik car will not give out enough noise to be detectable for long enough so that one has time to get out of the T-junction, especially if turning right.

Therefore, all such junctions should make a car-detected noise in future. Depending on the speed and weight of the coming car, I favour a range of sounds, all of which should also be broadcast to an always-on radio inside the car, with anything going above 20mph emitting at least 110 decibels.

Alternatively, one foot high ramps could be established either side of the junction, preferably painted blood-red and with a few spikes requiring an even more careful transition by the killermobile.

Cugel

[bovlomov]

I rarely wear bright clothing on the bike, but last week I couldn't find anything else, so set off wearing a jacket of brightest fluorescent yellow/green.

While travelling along a pretty quiet road at about 15mph, I saw a group on the pavement ahead of me - three adults and three children. As I approached, all three adults looked in my direction and began to shepherd the children across the road. The sun was behind them and I was dressed for attention seeking, but I wasn't seen. I braked and they stepped back onto the pavement. No harm done.

In some of these cases, the pedestrian has seen the cyclist but expects him to stop. Playing 'chicken' in other words. I don't think that happened here. There might have been an element of 'group think' going on, whereby everyone trusts someone else to have looked. I don't know.

If I hadn't been wearing that jacket, I reckon, my dull clothing would have been blamed.

[mjr]

I rarely wear bright clothing on the bike, but last week I couldn't find anything else, so set off wearing a jacket of brightest fluorescent yellow/green.

While travelling along a pretty quiet road at about 15mph, I saw a group on the pavement ahead of me - three adults and three children. As I approached, all three adults looked in my direction and began to shepherd the children across the road. The sun was behind them and I was dressed for attention seeking, but I wasn't seen.

That was my experience, repeatedly, for the year or two where I wore bright yellow stereotypical so-called hi-vis (and I was leaving in green-and-stone Somerset, not amongst the yellow fens crops). I think people aren't expecting what looks like a roadworker to be approaching them at speed, so they simply don't see you - their brain filters you out as clearly some sort of mistake or optical illusion, Somebody Else's Problem or the Invisible Gorilla, depending how old you are.

I don't care whether my black-with-silver-trim jacket is blamed if I do ever crash - I believe it's already helped me to be seen many many more times than the misnamed hi-vis.

[bovlomov]

That was my experience, repeatedly, for the year or two where I wore bright yellow stereotypical so-called hi-vis (and I was leaving in green-and-stone Somerset, not amongst the yellow fens crops). I think people aren't expecting what looks like a roadworker to be approaching them at speed, so they simply don't see you - their brain filters you out as clearly some sort of mistake or optical illusion, Somebody Else's Problem or the Invisible Gorilla, depending how old you are.

I don't care whether my black-with-silver-trim jacket is blamed if I do ever crash - I believe it's already helped me to be seen many many more times than the misnamed hi-vis.

Although behind me was a predominantly man-made backdrop (buildings and asphalt), might that yellow/green have been mistaken for a privet bush (or similar)? Does the brain process green as a stationary colour? That's the colour that the human brain has experienced most during its evolution, and it is generally associated with objects planted firmly in the ground (parakeets notwithstanding).

Is there any science behind the hi-vis industry, or is it all founded on common sense?

[Cunobelin]

There is a theory that it is because we are too quiet.

That is why it is Stop, look, LISTEN

Electric vehicles saw an increase in pedestrian accidents when they were first introduced as although equally visible as ordinary cars, they were not being heard.


Fitting false noise emitters solved this