Hey, want to do an experiment? Of course you do, everyone loves an experiment – just click on the link below, and don’t read on until you’re done the test, it’s dead easy, only takes ninety seconds or so.
How did you get on? Fancy another crack at it? Try this one –
How was that? Not too hard, hey – just a bit of counting, but not as easy as it seems, I know, and the results do surprise. It’s a proper scientific experiment – give it a try on your friends, family and co-workers and, if they’re anything like mine, you’ll find the results are about the same: about half the people who take the test don’t see the gorilla.
There’s no personality type that’s more or less likely to see the gorilla, it’s not a test of eyesight, intelligence or speed of brainwork – just, some people do, some don’t. So don’t be offended if you don’t – it just happens.
There is a point to all this – it’s all about how perceptive people are to things they’re not expecting when they’re concentrating on something else. The problem is, for you and me, that it relates roughly to how perceptive motorists can be to motorcyclists. How many times have you had someone half-pull out on you at a junction or roundabout, with a look of shock on their face. Or, even worse, a full pull-out leading to a catastrophic bike-car interface?
It happens, a lot – MAIDS was a massive European study into the causes of motorcycle accidents carried out at the turn of the millennia, and although the almost endless mass of statistics available in the report is beyond my scope to fully comprehend, some of the bullet-pointed summaries at the end make for interesting reading.
How about 50 per cent of the almost a 1000 accidents investigated found the primary contributing factor to be driver error on behalf of another vehicle (read car/bus/van/lorry, etc)? How about over 70 per cent of other vehicle driver errors being down to a failure to perceive the motorcyclist? Or 78 per cent of accidents involving a collision with another vehicle? In less than 20 per cent of cases was speed differential with surrounding traffic thought to be a significant factor, so it’s not like we’re all hooning around like eejits.
The sad fact is, there’s nothing to be learned from this other than to be on your guard – there’s no technique we can learn that will make us more likely to be spotted. Visibility is not the main issue, although it would be wrong to assume that wearing hi-viz gear would be anything other than useful in making you more likely to be spotted and therefore statistically less likely to be pulled out in front of or into.
Nope, it’s just this – sometimes you just ain’t gonna be seen. About 50 per cent of the time, where you happen to be the unexpected event in front of someone concentrating on their driving, more or less. Even if you’re wearing a gorilla suit.
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