There’s a rather well-written post on LinkedIn called ‘Looked but failed to see – the hidden danger lurking in plain sight’ by Steven Gibb, a ‘driver training specialist’.
Published on Wednesday 26 February, he asks:
“Have you ever heard a driver say, “I looked, but I never saw them”? This common phrase is at the heart of one of the most dangerous cognitive failures on the road: Cognitive Perception Failure (CPF).”
He continues: “CPF is responsible for a significant number of collisions involving motorcycles, pedestrians, cyclists, and even emergency vehicles. Drivers often check their surroundings yet fail to perceive critical hazards—resulting in potentially fatal consequences.”
Steven says that there is “science behind cognitive perception failure” and that “CPF is not about poor eyesight—it’s about how the brain processes visual information. Research highlights several key reasons why drivers miss hazards, even when looking directly at them”.
Steven correctly says that amongst the real-world consequences are motorcycle and bicycle accidents including “the infamous “Sorry Mate, I Didn’t See You” (SMIDSY)” which results when drivers “fail to register their presence”.
And he goes on to talk about:
- inattentional blindness
- saccadic masking
- expectation bias
- cognitive load and distractions
If you’re a regular here, you’ll almost certainly have realised that everything in Stephen’s LI post are topics covered in ‘Science Of Being Seen’, the presentation I created as long ago as early 2012 when SOBS debuted as the third module for the pilot Biker Down courses.
SOBS also talks about some other very important perceptual issues, including motion camouflage and our remarkable inability to firstly see what we’re not expecting and secondly guess what we might not be seeing (both exploited by magicians).
SOBS also talks about the ‘looked but COULD NOT see’ and ‘looked, saw and MISCALCULATED speed and distance’ issues that cause a significant chunk of the collisions at junction.
And of course, SOBS also debunked the simplistic “put your lights on and wear hi-vis and you’ll be seen” road safety advice by examining the effect of contrast camouflage, then pointed out the absolute requirement for riders to understand the importance of pro-active evasion and avoidance techniques to escape the moment we’re NOT seen.
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WHAT IS SCIENCE OF BEING SEEN? (SOBS)
SOBS is my in-depth investigation into the
‘Sorry Mate, I Didn’t See You (SMIDSY) collision
between motorcycles and other vehicles.
Created for the fire services ‘Biker Down’
course, it’s based on science, not speculation.
I aim to quash some persistent myths about
how and why junction collisions happen, and
show how motorcyclists can employ simple
techniques to stay out of trouble!FIND OUT MORE – www.scienceofbeingseen.org
BUY THE SOBS e-book – https://ko-fi.com/s/88fbc15a82
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Personally, I’d been talking about many of the issues since at least the mid-90s on my website blogs, as well as on bike forums and from the first SOBS presentation in early 2012 and right up to 2025, the SOBS presentation has been put together as a research-based explanation for the SMIDSY collision, and one which doesn’t rely on the time-worn trope that collisions at junctions happen “because drivers don’t look properly for motorcycles”.
What made SOBS unique at the time was not just that it was the very first time anyone had made a serious attempt to explain to motorcyclists (and anyone else who would care to listen) just how easy it was for drivers to ‘look but fail to see’ a motorcycle at a junction and why we need to look after ourselves, but – second unique point – everything was being covered TOGETHER to create a straightforward and cohesive explanation for the SMIDSY.
Having said all that, and whilst it would be nice to get a credit, the fact is I’m happy to see more articles covering the visual perception issues like this starting to appear for a very simple reason; the more articles like this that cover the science in a readable way, the more chance there is that ordinary riders will read them then actually start to believe there’s more to not being seen than drivers ‘not looking properly’.
And if we can convince enough riders to believe that, those individuals might start making pro-active efforts to protect themselves, and then we might actually begin to see a reduction in the proportion of ‘looked but failed to see’ collisions happening at junctions.
We still have a long way to go though. One of the very first comments on the LinkedIn article was to dismiss it:
“Drivers don’t look properly for motorcycles.”
I’m still fighting that response myself. Sometimes you really can lead the horse to water but it’s still hard to convince it that it needs to take a drink.
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