*** SCIENCE OF BEING SEEN *** Moving from ‘Think Bike’ to ‘Biker THINK!’ Ten days ago on my Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/survivalskills, I posted an article about the lack of imagination in Police Scotland’s response to motorcycle crashes – basically, it was more enforcement. At the same time, what caught my eye was the goal that the Scottish ‘Road Safety Framework’ is aiming for is a 30% reduction in motorcyclist KSIs by 2030.
Suggesting that some new ideas were needed, I promptly got a response from an accident claims firm in Scotland telling me about their campaign aimed at drivers called ‘Take Another Look’:
“We are calling for a new campaign to ‘#takeanotherlook’ at junctions…”
On the face of it, that seems like a good idea. Nationwide data from the Department for Transport shows that in 2021, intersections – whether they are T, Y or staggered junctions – are the most common locations of motorcyclist casualties. Collisions at junctions represent no less than 34.7% of combined fatalities and injuries – one-in-three.
The ‘Take Another Look’ people offer an answer as they say their ‘new’ campaign is “…echoing the ‘Think Bike’ initiative of the 1970s that was aimed at increasing motorists’ awareness of motorcycles and reducing accidents caused by failure to spot them in time.”
Just one problem. Whilst calling for a 30% drop in motorcycle casualties by 2030, that same Scottish Road Safety Framework document made this telling statement:
“With regards to longer-term trend of motorcycle fatalities since 1994, there have been many peaks and troughs, and we are still in the same position we were in thirty years ago.”
On the one hand, we have a freshly-minted safety campaign simply repeating what we have been trying for the last fifty.
On the other, we have a statement of fact telling us that thirty years of Scottish motorcycle safety campaigns haven’t changed anything in thirty years.
Shouldn’t that be telling us something? Why are we expecting something that hasn’t worked for half a century to suddenly start working now?
Even if the people putting these campaigns together can’t see it, can’t we motorcyclists see that it’s time to move on from expecting drivers to keep us safe by ‘Thinking Bike’? Isn’t it time to adopt a fresh approach where we learn more about just why drivers don’t see motorcycles, to adopt a proactive approach where we stop relying on others, and crucially to learn to look for ways to avoid being caught up in what needn’t actually be a collision?
Biker, THINK!
================================= 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 – http://www.scienceofbeingseen.org BUY THE SOBS e-book – https://ko-fi.com/s/88fbc15a82 WATCH OUT FOR LIVE ONLINE TALKS
I was recently sent a screenshot from a video which included the expression “science of why we’re not seen on the road as motorcyclists”. It was shown on YouTube and featured an interview with Steve Reed of Biker Down North America at the Toronto Motorcycle Show earlier this month.
You’re probably aware if you’re a regular on my pages that I created a presentation called ‘Science Of Being Seen’ (SOBS) as a module of the award-winning ‘Biker Down’ course originally pioneered by Kent Fire and Rescue Service (KFRS).
As Biker Down was picked up nationwide, I made the background information my presentation was based on freely available to all fire services to use, requiring only a simple attribution to myself as the creator of the work. And I personally delivered the SOBS presentation until lockdown in 2020. Then in 2021, I was told that that SOBS was no longer going to be used and that it would be replaced by a brand-new ‘Thinking Biker’ video to be created in Canada. At the same time my personal connection with KFRS was to severed.
Since I was never officially connected with KFRS, the fact is I retain copyright on the Science Of Being Seen presentation and I continue to research the topic and deliver talks online and in person to motorcycle groups today.
So, as you might expect, I watched the video with interest to see the context in which that form of words was used.
Steve starts off by explaining how Biker Down came about:
“Biker Down was started over 10 years ago in the UK by UK Fire and Rescue and the premise was pretty simple… often times motorcyclists are riding together in groups or we’re riding the same great roads and so it’s sort of a natural thing that often times the first person upon a scene of a motorcycle accident could be a fellow rider. And so the the founder of Biker Down UK Jim Sanderson sort of had an epiphany moment when he was riding with a group and he came to decide that hey what we do actually isn’t that difficult we could teach it to the average rider and so that was sort of the genesis for Biker Down.”
Well, not quite.
This is going to be a very long post which I doubt that many people will be that interested in but I think it’s important to document exactly how the Biker Down course came into being, just what my connection with the course actually was, my involvement with Steve Reed and Thinking Biker, as well as how my time with Biker Down came to an abrupt end.
It true that it all started in 2011. It’s true that Jim Sanderson came up with the idea for Biker Down. Jim is a firefighter at Kent Fire and Rescue Service (KFRS) and he was out on a group ride when a rider came off on a fast dual carriageway. He had to go into professional mode to control the accident scene to protect the downed biker, and to organise emergency services to attend. He realised that he was the only one there that had much idea what to do. It’s also true that he realised that what he was doing wasn’t actually “that difficult” and that he could teach those crash management skills “to the average rider”.
So Jim set to and put together that accident scene management module. For the second module, covering emergency first aid, Jim enlisted the fire service’s in-house paramedics. Along with advice on emergency first aid, they also brought in the then-revolutionary idea that two people working together and using the correct technique could safely remove the helmet of an unconscious rider in order to clear the airway to assist with breathing, and also in the case that CPR was needed.
So far, so good.
But Jim also realised that to ‘sell’ the new safety intervention to the higher-ups at KFRS, a crash PREVENTION module would also be needed. And that’s where I got involved.
Jim and I had been knocking ideas back and forth across the internet for a couple of years by this point, discussing various safety issues such as the ‘Sorry Mate I Didn’t See You’ SMIDSY collision and group riding crashes. As he used to say later when introducing me at Biker Down events in Kent; “we didn’t always agree but when we didn’t and discussed it the bugger always seemed to be right”. Suffice to say, I changed Jim’s mind on several aspects of crashing!
So Jim messaged me about his planned course, and we had a back-and-forth discussion about what might work for this crash prevention module. I came up with several ideas.
With my suggestions in hand, Jim put the outline concept of Biker Down to his bosses and got permission to run three pilot courses on site at Ashford Fire Station, just so long as it was in his own time and run entirely by volunteers.
The first of the courses was delivered to members from the bike forum where we’d met. It was in the autumn, and as they were keen on group rides, I developed and delivered a talk on group riding techniques for them.
The very first Biker Down course
It included a demo of what often goes wrong on a group ride as the leader speeds up and everyone behind races to catch up. I used a piece of elastic, with cut-out cardboard bikes on it, stretched it out to represent the increase in speed, then let one end go – all the ‘bikes’ crashed into each other. I also got the attendees walking around the room to see how two different ‘marking systems’ worked – the ‘leapfrog’ (where a marker sits tight as everyone in the group goes past, until the backmarker arrives) and the ‘caterpillar’ system I learned on my training with the National Motorcycle Escort Group (where each rider waits only for the bike behind, whereupon they swap places).
Feedback was good enough to go ahead with the second pilot a few weeks later.
A still from the original ‘Think once, think twice, THINK BIKE’ public information film
This time, I delivered a very different presentation – it was all about the reasons for collisions involving motorcycles and drivers at junctions (intersections). The key point was that rather than say “drivers don’t look properly”, I explained that almost all drivers DO look, but all too frequently, they fail to see the motorcycle. There’s a difference. I explained issues such as motion camouflage and looming, peripheral blindness and saccadic masking.
I also discussed the lack of practical evidence for any positive effect from day-riding lights and hi-vis clothing – there’s been no obvious reduction in the proportion of collisions happening at junctions. I pointed to research from the 70s that found that a dipped headlight made for a poor daytime light because the beam is focused below eye level of anyone looking at it, so a more diffuse light source was needed. And I also made the suggestion that it was likely that in daytime conditions in a rural environment, the best-contrasting colour for hi-vis was likely to be pink!
Jim was happier with this presentation and decided to adopt it for the third pilot, which ran a few weeks after the second. I gave it a few more tweaks, and when Biker Down was properly launched in the spring of 2012, it was this talk which was included.
It quickly became known as the ‘Science Of Being Seen’, and usually concluded the three-hour course. Jim got some funding from the road safety account too, for publicity, expenses for volunteers, and also to provide free first aid kits to attendees.
Kevin trainer and SOBS – Jim firefighter and crash scene management – Andy first responder and first aid
Jim had always wanted Biker Down to be ‘open access’ enabling any FRS in the UK to roll out the course, and by March, he’d created a Biker Down UK Facebook page to put the word out about what we were doing in Kent. I don’t know how many Biker Down courses we delivered at Ashford that year, but at one point, we were running one every couple of weeks and as well as the interest from bikers, it wasn’t long before other Fire and Rescue Services (FRSs) were sending representatives to see what it was all about.
Later in 2012, Biker Down was nominated for a Prince Michael of Kent International Road Safety Award. At the end of the year, we all made the trip to the Savoy in London for the awards ceremony, and we were very pleased to be one of the winners in the motorcycle category.
At the Savoy for the Prince Michael of Kent award ceremony
There was just one slight hitch – my status and connection with the fire service.
In-house fire service rules prohibit any activities that might seem to be promoting a commercial business. Since I run Survival Skills with an eye to eating and paying my bills, it might reasonably have been argued that even though I was giving my time for free, my relationship with KFRS was in violation of those rules.
Almost certainly because of that, there was a suggestion to bring me ‘on board’ by becoming an official volunteer, but I quickly realised that there was a big issue for me to consider. By becoming a volunteer my SOBS presentation would likely end up becoming the property of KFRS. I’d actually be handing over the rights to the talk. Not only could I potentially lose control over the content, but all I would be getting in return for my hundreds of hours of personal research would be expenses for attending and delivering the talk.
I mulled it over, and decided I needed to retain rights over my ‘intellectual property’ by not signing up as an official volunteer and thus continuing to provide the talk and my time for free. All my time was given gratis, free and for nothing. The only income I ever received was from selling books to attendees.
In the event, nothing more was said so I guess an official ‘blind eye’ was turned my way. Looking back, the only hint that there might have been an issue was that Jim created his OWN version of Science Of Being Seen for the ‘open access’ pack that he produced to be handed out to other FRSs. He said it was ‘dumbed down’ to allow any firefighter to deliver it. Retrospectively, it may have been a move to get around the intellectual property issue.
Over the next few years, I continued delivering SOBS at Biker Down events in Kent on a monthly basis.
We also ran courses at MCN’s offices up in Peterborough, and I went with the Thames Valley team to Honda’s Bracknell headquarters to deliver SOBS there.
Yes, that is Danny John-Jules – he came along to the Honda Biker Down event
There were a couple of other events, details of which I can’t immediately recall. And in 2014, I was also invited to get involved in the KFRS ‘Ride Skills’ events at Brands Hatch too.
Back in 2012, the content of SOBS was far from universally accepted. Thanks to some searching questions – including a few hostile ones – I decided to create a more in-depth explanation of each element of the presentation with credits to the original research on which I had based each segment of SOBS.
The banner with the Science Of Being Seen website
The obvious place to put this in-depth background information was online. It can be found at www.scienceofbeingseen.org and I included the link at the end of all my presentations, thus enabling anyone to access it and research the original sources themselves if they felt the need. I’m still updating the site regularly with newly-discovered research, by the way. I also summarised the presentation in a slim paperback to enable attendees to take away a ‘aide memoire’.
And that brings us to 2020. We had time for just one Biker Down event, right at the beginning of March 2020 before we went into lockdown.
Kevin at the Rochester Road Safety Experience, March 2020
That was to be the last course I delivered for KFRS.
Now I need to backtrack to September 2018.
Jim announced that a Canadian company called Medical Data Carriers (MDC) was about to supply Biker Down with free sticky contact data cards to replace the ‘green dot’ cards that had been previously handed out with the first aid kit but were costing too much.
This is where the Steve Reed mentioned above comes into the story. It transpired that Steve was keen to set up Biker Down North America and in January 2021, Jim announced:
“Over the last 2 years I have been working closely with Steve Reed from MDC and we are now proud to hear that the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) has approved Biker Down North America.”
At this point, internal discussions about how to relaunch Biker Down were underway, and I believe it was at Jim’s suggestion that I made contact with Steve in February and asked if he was familiar with SOBS. I sent him some background to explain why SOBS was part of Biker Down, and mentioned that SOBS had also been used by the New Zealand Transport Agency and their Accident Compensation Corporation on the Shiny Side Up rider safety interventions in 2018 and 2019. On February 20, Steve responded:
“I have been thinking about how best to deliver that 3rd module” and said ” I do see the value in your SOBS content and it would be very unique here in America.” He asked if the material and content could be “tuned easily for North America”.
I replied that I didn’t see any issue with that, as the same crash mechanisms apply, just in mirror image. We swapped a few more questions and answers, and Steve requested a video of me delivering the presentation and speaker notes. I duly provided those on March 10. On May 6, Steve asked for an ‘about you’ resume and photo, which I also sent over.
It was around six weeks later, on June 25, that I discovered my SOBS module was being replaced by a new ‘Thinking Biker’ video. This would be shown to promote a new discussion session as the final module of Biker Down, and it would be adopted right across the UK. I hadn’t heard a word about this previously, and at much the same time, I got a letter from the KFRS assistant manager for buildings and works to tell me that I was no longer allowed on fire service property. It appeared both SOBS and myself had been well and truly dumped without ceremony.
I’ll admit I’m speculating but I believe this is what probably happened. Whilst things were at a stand during lockdown, seeing that well over half of the county’s FRSs were running Biker Down courses at a local level, the National Fire Chiefs Council – the top body of the fire service – decided to adopt Biker Down as a national fire service initiative. At any event, Biker Down is now a module in the re-launched Enhanced Rider Course being offered by the DVSA. But whatever the facts, I won’t go into that any further.
It didn’t take long to discover that ‘Thinking Biker’ was being made in Canada, by Steve Reed. I sent Steve a message asking if he could: “update me on ‘The Thinking Biker’ and where – IF – SOBS fits in with this?”
Back came his reply.
“My IP lawyer found that we could not publicly use SOBS title for the module because someone had a trademark that had similarities in training here in North America. With that news and considering that there are several safety messages that we want to include in the module and that we may want to add more later, a more all encompassing name was selected that we could use. We are also making his [Jim’s] module in video to reduce staff costs. I am writing script now and it is going to be in the spirit of a Fort nine video. 8-10 minutes. So no we won’t be using your presentation for this.”
I ran Google searches on the ‘science of being seen’ term and drew a blank. As far as I can see, the only references are to SOBS as part of Biker Down, to my own website work, and as a presentation being delivered by myself. I’m guessing the issue was that the term ‘science of being seen’ was associated with myself and my Survival Skills training school.
Copyright – it’s on my SOBS work
Later that year, I attended a Biker Down course for myself in West London, hoping to see the Thinking Biker video. The presenter actually delivered a badly-mangled version of SOBS. When I mentioned I was the original author of SOBS and asked why we hadn’t been shown Thinking Biker, he told me it wasn’t quite ready for use.
Some months later, a contact at another FRS did send me a copy of Thinking Biker, so naturally I watched it. What was rather a surprise was to hear the presenter say at just 30 seconds into the video:
“Today, we’re taking a deep dive into the art and SCIENCE OF BEING SEEN on motorcycles.”
My capitals, by the way. So they couldn’t CALL the video ‘Science Of Being Seen’, but they could TALK about the science of being seen. Hmm.
================================= 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!
So what does Thinking Biker cover? What are all the new safety messages that are included that weren’t in SOBS?
The first explanation is of foveal vision, an optical phenomenon I mention in SOBS.
Then comes the issue of saccadic masking during eye movements which shuts down the visual feed to prevent motion blur, plus the fixations which are the brief moments we actually gain visual data. That’s in SOBS. Moreover, Thinking Biker using the very same ‘vertical blinds’ metaphor I use in SOBS which I admit to having pinched myself from a very good video by the Association of British Drivers – they get a credit on the website and in the book. The only difference with the Thinking Biker explanation is that it uses a short video segment rather than a still picture. Oh, and the steering wheel’s on the other side of the car and traffic on the ‘wrong’ side of the road.
Next, we get a short clip of a driver looking but failing to see a motorcycle from one of the UK’s ‘Think Bike’ videos – I’ve used stills from the exact same video.
Following that is a very clever video of a horse galloping across a prairie amongst stationary grazing cows to flag up the effect of lateral motion on detection. This is a concept I was introduced to by Malcolm Palmer, another UK instructor at the time. Years back, Malc talked about a double ‘back and forth’ movement across the lane he called the ‘Z Line’ and proposed it would attract attention. I always credited Malc for that element of SOBS. But if an object is rapidly approaching against a static point background…” – as you probably guessed, it’s the concept of motion camouflage. I use a video clip of a Spitfire flying straight at the camera and being almost impossible to spot until it’s almost on top of the camera.
We’re then told that a driver devotes about 0.5 second to scanning an intersection; a figure that just happens to be in the SOBS presentation.
And then there’s a mention of visual obstructions caused by the windscreen pillars and blocked lines-of-sight because the motorcycle is behind another vehicle. Guess what? SOBS covers that too, using the ‘beam blindness’ term I picked up in a FortNine video.
What follows next is a rather confused segment where the presenter appears to recommend hi-vis in what they call ‘Neon green’ – we call it ‘Saturn yellow’. The argument is that this works because “humans are most sensitive to light at a wavelength of 555 nanometers”. That IS fresh info but having talked about the value of ‘Neon green’ as a hi-vis colour, the video actually shows a rider wearing a mixed yellow / orange sleeveless vest! It’s also very hard to see she is actually wearing hi-vis from the three-quarter ahead angle the video clip is filmed from – that’s the very reason I recommend hi-vis with sleeves, something that doesn’t get a mention.
Next item. “While Neon green may stand out against dull concrete jungles, it might blend in nicely in lush green environments.” Ah, right back to the SOBS script.
I’ve been using this wonderful photo to illustrate the relationship between foreground and background colours, and conspicuity.
However, for some reason, the production team decided that using a photo of cannabis leaves was the right image for their ‘lush green environment’. Oh dear.
“As thinking bikers, we need to have multiple strategies at hand”. Our presenter is now shown holding an orange hi-vis in one hand, and a pink one in the other.
Pink with sleeves – as recommended by SOBS
As far as I am aware, SOBS on Biker Down was first safety intervention to suggest that pink hi-vis is probably the most conspicuous in a rural environment – it’s less the sensitivity of the eye that matters, much more the contrast between the hi-vis and the background colours. As the humble colourwheel used for picking paint combos for home decorating shows, the colour that contrasts most strongly with yellow / green foliage is pink.
There’s one more element still to come – camouflage. And the example just happens to be the very same one that I use for SOBS – the tiger. Even though the tiger is hi-vis orange, the stripes disrupt the silhouette of the animal and help it to blend in with the environment. “If you use the right colour then use patterns to confuse the eye, you’re practically invisible”. Exactly as SOBS explains.
The tiger graphic from my SOBS presentations
Dazzle camouflage – also using an illustration that I’ve used myself – is also mentioned, but in a confusing segment that suggests that it means that “big blocks of contrasting colour make you stand out” rather than break up your outline. Unfortunately, once again, the presenter is wearing a sleeveless, two-colour vest. That’s very much the opposite of what SOBS suggests. Sticking to a single colour, even when it’s black, presents a coherent silhouette in a way that stripy, multi-colour vests don’t.
Struggling to see any new safety messages, I am reasonably certain that an impartial observer would also see that Thinking Biker covers much of the same ground as SOBS.
Since Thinking Biker largely parallels SOBS, I would say that it offers reasonably accurate information but there are some buts.
For starters, it’s not so logically ordered. I put a lot of thought into how to construct the talk so that ideas flow.
Second, Thinking Biker gets delivered in seven minutes. In such a short time there’s nothing like the depth of explanation I achieve with my presentations.
Third, there is that clear misunderstanding of the role of dazzle camouflage.
Fourth, there is the issue of discussing ‘Neon green’ whilst showing a very different dual-colour vest in the clip. SOBS talks about the role of a single colour – ANY colour – in creating the recognisable silhouette of bike and rider.
Fifth – and here my advice in SOBS diverges completely from Thinking Biker – there’s no mention of full sleeved hi-vis, only vests. It’s ironic that the video clip used to show the hi-vis vest in action amply illustrates my point – the dual-colour tabard is almost invisible from the chosen camera angle because most of it is obscured by the bike’s screen and the rider’s black leather sleeves. SOBS actively promotes the choice of a full-sleeved hi-vis jacket and emphasises the role of the rider’s arms in enhancing conspicuity.
Sixth – what’s missing? There’s nothing the issue of ‘saw, looked and misjudged speed and distance’. There’s nothing about day-riding lights or night-time conspicuity.
And seventh and pretty crucially in my opinion, there’s no mention of the need for a genuinely proactive approach to riding defensively. The biggest weakness of conspicuity aids is that they are entirely ‘passive protection’ and rely 100% on the driver of the other vehicle taking notice of the rider’s hi-vis and DRLs.
I use the final element of SOBS to emphasise the importance of taking proactive steps; changing position to ‘see and be seen’, applying the Australian technique of ‘setting up the brakes’ to reduce reaction times, the use of the horn as a warning when we think a driver might be about to move into our path, the surprising effect of reduce speed to cut stopping distances (halve speed, and stopping distance drops to one quarter), and the need to practice swerves and hard stops to keep them fresh.
Taking SOBS online to New Zealand audiences for Shiny Side up in Feb 2021
And then we roll to the end, and to the credits. We see: “Producer and writer – Steve Reed” then “Producer and writer – Jim Sanderson”.
Not a mention of my delivery of SOBS for the third module of Biker Down, no mention of me sending an annotated copy of the SOBS presentation plus background information to Steve, and no hint that the SOBS presentation might have been any kind of inspiration for the content of Thinking Biker.
Let’s return to the interview with Steve Reed at the Toronto Motorcycle show earlier this month. Steve says:
“Fast forward 10 years later, the UK has seen their motorcycle fatalities reduce by 30%. We like to attribute a lot of that to Biker Down and some other great programs there.”
A 30% reduction in motorcycle fatalities since Biker Down started? That’s a claim that I cannot see supported with any crash statistics I am aware of over the period from 2012 to 2022. Exclude the COVID year of 2020 when motorcycle and car use was down significantly on a normal year and crashes were down, the best you can say is that the figure has flat-lined.
And then he moves on to talk about the three modules. About the third module, Steve says that it is:
“…little bit of a proactive segment so in that we’re teaching a little bit of the science of why we’re not seen on the road as motorcyclists.”
Science of Why We’re Not Seen? Hmm.
He continues:
“So we’re talking about saccadic masking and looming and some other sciency stuff that really will make sense to us as motorcycle riders but also as car drivers to be better and more aware of our surroundings and especially motorcycle riders and some of the other things we touch upon in there is also conspicuity strategy so what should I be wearing in the urban environment what should I maybe be wearing when I’m outside of the urban environment and really helping people be prepared in that respect.”
I’ve seen comments to the effect that I don’t ‘own’ the science. That’s true, and I have never claimed to. One of the reasons for producing the SOBS website was to ensure that the authors of the original research WERE credited, something I never have time to do during the live presentation.
Nor did I perform the original research. I certainly didn’t discover motion camouflage or the phenomenon of looming, I don’t claim any discovery of saccadic masking, nor was I the first to suggest dazzle camouflage – though I did manage to describe it correctly.
What I believe was unique about SOBS back in 2012 was that for the very first time all the disparate elements behind the ‘Sorry Mate I Didn’t See You’ SMIDSY crash were brought together:
SOBS brought in the three mechanisms that cause collisions at junctions; looked and COULD NOT see, looked but FAILED to see, looked, saw but MISJUDGED speed and distance.
SOBS looked at how the structure of the vehicle and roadside obstacles obscured views for drivers and made motorcycles difficult to see.
SOBS introduced riders to the science of visual perception in order to explain just how and why drivers can look but fail to see motorcycles at intersections or misjudge their speed and distance.
SOBS looked at the science behind conspicuity aids to explain their strengths and weaknesses, and why riders should not assume that their use will ensure they are seen.
SOBS made a big point of emphasising the crucial role to be played by a genuinely proactive approach to identifying the threat, assessing the risk and proactively managing those risks.
By pulling these threads together, SOBS was able to tell a coherent story about the SMIDSY to motorcyclists for the first time.
The business card with the essentials of SOBS given to Biker Down attendees by me
It IS possible that Steve Reed employed people to perform a literature survey of the research into the SMIDSY collision, which duly came up with more or less the exact-same conclusions I had previous reached. After all, the background science is unchanged.
So I leave you to draw your own conclusions about Thinking Biker and where the source material most likely came from.
I mentioned intellectual copyright. Had the idea for the Science Of Being Seen come from inside KFRS, and had I developed SOBS under their instruction, then I think it almost certain that my contributions to Biker Down would been legitimately regarded as the property of KFRS. In that case, KFRS could have passed that information on to Steve Reed.
But the facts are these; I was asked to develop a suitable module for Biker Down and went on to create SOBS from scratch. As I’ve also pointed out, SOBS was the second presentation created. I’d argue this means I was in the role of an outside ‘consultant’ being brought in to develop and deliver a suitable course, and since the choice of content was left to me, I would argue the concept and content of SOBS remains my intellectual property.
Having said that, the intent was always to share the fruits of my research freely to ALL motorcyclists to help improve understanding of the SMIDSY crash, just as I have done for years via my posts on forums and on Facebook. For that reason, the SOBS website and all the content in it is provided under a Creative Commons Licence. The sole requirement is that anyone using my research in their own work attributes it to me.
I neither asked for, nor took, a penny from KFRS or any of the FRSs for developing the presentation or for my time spent delivering it. Nor did I ask for payment from Biker Down North America when recording and annotating the video for them. I placed one and only one condition on using the content of SOBS, whether by the UK FRSs or by Biker Down North America – if my information was used, I asked to be credited with the original idea for the presentation.
That’s all I requested, and I know that many of the UK FRSs delivering SOBS as part of Biker Down have scrupulously referenced my contribution at the end of their own presentations. The credit requested is conspicuous by its absence.
This isn’t ‘sour grapes’. I will always be thankful to Jim for that initial invite to become involved, even if the parting of the ways in 2021 could have been handled with more sensitivity. I’m very proud of what Biker Down has achieved, both in terms of the awards and developing from a local rider safety initiative to something that’s been recognised as of national significance. And I’m still happy to support Biker Down whenever I can – I will still talk up the course and I have stickers in the car and on the bike.
But I am left with a degree of frustration about what has happened subsequently, after after I sent Steve Reed the SOBS video, transcript and speaker notes in good faith, and how my input appears to being written out of the official story.
The most recent SOBS graphic
Anyway, done is done, and I will leave it at that, having explained my perspective. Thanks for reading, and I hope you know have a better understanding of the relationship between myself, KFRS and Biker Down, and the new ‘Thinking Biker’ video.
================================ PLEASE SUPPORT ‘SCIENCE OF BEING SEEN’
The ‘Science Of Being Seen’ project (SOBS) is FUNDED ENTIRELY BY MYSELF and I need YOUR SUPPORT to continue my research.
The SOBS project is FREELY AVAILABLE to all motorcyclists and aims to help improve our understanding of the ‘Sorry Mate, I Didn’t See You’ SMIDSY collision.
*** SCIENCE OF BEING SEEN *** Is the retinal blind spot a problem? Each of our eyes has a blind spot. This is where, as I’m sure most of you will know, visual information is not detected. These blind areas are due to lack of the specialised photoreceptor rods and cones responsible for capturing light and transmitting visual signals to the brain. The optic nerve carries visual information from the eye to the brain, and the blind spot is caused by the optic nerve’s attachment to the retina where it exits the eye.
The retinal blind spot is a natural feature of the human visual system and covers somewhere between 15 and 20 degrees of our vision in each eye. The diagram shows the approximate location of the blind spot in a healthy left eye. The right eye would be a mirror image.
Recently, I’ve seen a number of articles suggesting that the blind spot is a factor in ‘looked but failed to see’ crashes – or at least, one of the reasons.
One article claimed that cars could go missing in the driver’s retinal blind spot, another suggested that drivers would fail to spot cycles as they approach a junction where the driver is about to turn:
“This blind spot can automatically create problems when driving. If you are not looking and actually moving your head when at junctions for example, you stand the risk of not seeing a narrow object such as a cyclist, because they could be in your blind spot, or even something larger at times.”
The article went on to suggest that “the brain makes up, or fills in what it believes to be there!”
And of course, motorcyclists have read these articles and started reporting on the internet that the retinal blind spots is to blame for collisions where drivers don’t spot motorcycles.
So is the retinal blind spot really a problem?
Almost certainly not. It’s pretty obvious that we don’t have a pair of gaping holes in our visual field, and until we actually try to find them we’re not actually conscious of the presence of the retinal blind spots.
That’s because unless we have lost the sight in one eye, we have binocular vision. That is, the field of vision of each eye overlaps. That means anything in the blind spot of one eye is always going to be within the visual field of the other eye.
As part of the normal processing of visual data, the brain takes the detail and information from both eyes and interpolates – fuses – the images from both eyes into one coherent view.
This means the missing visual data created by the retinal blind spot in one eye is filled in by the brain by using visual data from the other. It’s the same reason we don’t have ‘pigeon vision’ as claimed in a recent FortNine video, and this is why we don’t see our own nose.
Similarly the retinal blind spot is simply not perceived under normal circumstances. In fact, to find the blind spot in one eye, we usually have to cover up the other.
================================= 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. It’s based firmly on science, not speculation and aims to quash some persistent myths about just why junction collisions happen, and show motorcyclists there are straightforward techniques we can employ to stay out of trouble! FIND OUT MORE – http://www.scienceofbeingseen.org WATCH OUT FOR LIVE ONLINE TALKS
The second point to make is that to make a detail scan of any particular area, we have to look directly at it, to bring it into the narrow cone of clearly focused, colour vision which is right in the centre of the visual field, and just 5 degrees across.
If we look along a road towards oncoming traffic, we examine the scene with our foveal vision. Even if our brain failed to perceive a motorcycle that was in the blind spot of one eye, it would be visible in the other eye since the two retinal blind spots are offset to opposite side.
And it’s even unlikely that the approaching motorcycle would be in the blind spot since, it’s offset to one side and mostly below the ‘horizon’ created by our foveal zone.
So, I’d suggest that for normally sighted people with binocular vision, the retinal blind spot is not a problem.
However, there are a number of diseases and conditions that can cause blind spots or scotomas in the eyes. These blind spots can be temporary or permanent, and they may affect a small portion of the visual field or a larger area, depending on the underlying cause. Some common conditions that can lead to blind spots include:
Glaucoma
Macular degeneration
Optic neuritis
Retinal detachment
In short, regular eye tests are essential for detecting eye problems early, even if you don’t currently have any noticeable symptoms. And should you experience any sudden or persistent vision changes, including the appearance of blind spots, you should seek immediate medical attention.
That’s far better advice than telling motorcyclists drivers don’t see them because of retinal blind spots.
IF YOU THINK THIS POST HIT THE SPOT please pay it forward to other bikers!
Does the way pigeons see the world explain some motorcycle crashes?
Ryan over at FortNine recently put up a video entitled ‘how pigeons explain a common motorcycle crash. The presentation says that pigeons “suck at assessing how fast a particular vehicle is closing on them”. And he points to some research that shows that in a particular speed zone, they take off at the same distance from a car no matter what the speed the car approaches at. He says that the pigeons learn the typical speed of cars in their zone. Ryan then says this is because pigeons lack ‘binocular disparity’ and the ability to judge approach speed.
What’s binocular disparity? Because we have two eyes which both offer a view of a particular object, each eye gets a slightly different flat 2-D image from the light that falls on to each retina.
Imagine a tree behind a car. The view of eye is at a slightly different angle, which means each eye will show the tree at a slightly different position relative to the car. The brain can uses these different images to extract depth information. This is binocular disparity.
Ryan then says that we can use binocular disparity “to judge how fast an object is closing on us”, and explains that this is known as ‘stereopsis’ and that “within thirty metres it’s the main method of gauging the speed of other vehicles”.
“Unless” he adds…
…”you’re a pigeon” because pigeons have their eyes on either side of their head.
And he then explains that as we’re sitting at a junction, we only have one eye turned towards the junction:
“Same handicap, see? Only one eye is looking because the other is blocked by my nose”.
He then says that this isn’t so much of a problem when tracking cars because “one eye can still track using the apparent change in size to gauge closing speed”. The problem with motorcycles is that because they are “skinny”, they “don’t show much enlargement” until the bike’s on top of the observer.
Same angle, same distances… the car appears to ‘grow’ more than the bike
This is actually the phenomenon known as looming, and it’s well-known that it is easier to judge speed and distance for cars than bikes – for some reason, our brain measures the lateral growth of a car better than the vertical growth of a bike.
OK, so that’s the basis for the video. It’s plausible-sounding, particularly as it’s well-known that the brain ‘edits out’ the fact that our nose is actually visible in both eyes but I’d say there are significant flaws in the reasoning.
PIGEONS DO HAVE BINOCULAR VISION – Despite having eyes on either side of their head, and though they may turn their heads to scan you with one eye, even for pigeons the fields of view of their two eyes do overlap. Not by much, but pigeons WILL look straight at you and when they do that they are seeing you with both eyes. See the photo.
And although I have no proof, I’d suggest they DO need good depth perception – if they didn’t, they’d never manage to land on a narrow branch. They look directly ahead of them when landing.
HUMANS HAVE A WIDE FIELD OF BINOCULAR VISION – For human vision, the overlap is around 120° – that means we have monocular vision ONLY for around 40° at each side of our field of view. Yes, the bridge of the nose occludes part of each eye’s visual field, but nothing like the extent of a pigeon.
PERIPHERAL VISION DETECTS MOVEMENT AND LIGHT – The pigeon’s eyes are on either side of its head because it’s a prey animal. The eyes give a ‘wrap-around’ field of view with only a very small blind spot directly behind its head. Humans do have a bigger blind spot, but even staring directly ahead, our eyes are sensitive to movement and lights at 90 degrees since that angle falls within our peripheral vision. And once something is detected, our instinct is to turn our head to look straight at it.
The nose restricts around 40° of our total vision either side, but when we want to ‘look’ at something we turn our heads to focus both eyes…
‘USEFUL’ AND FOCUSED VISION IS MORE RESTRICTED – Within that binocular field, the so-called ‘useful’ field of vision – the visual area from which information can be extracted in a single glance without eye or head movements – is restricted to around 10° either side of our line of sight.
Even more crucially, if we want to extract detail information, then we have to aim our gaze and use ‘foveal’ vision. This is where we get the clear, colour and focused image of the world. The bad news is that it’s a tiny cone, just 5° across at the point our gaze is focused. This is down to the construction of the human eye.
TO SEE DETAIL WE TURN OUR HEADS – It’s simply not possible to gain full situational awareness by relying entirely on the peripheral vision. If we want to look at something in detail, we have to bring it into the centre of our visual field, into our gaze. Mostly, this is a function of the anatomy of the eye; the fovea, the central portion of the retina, has the highest density of photo receptors. It’s also connected to a much larger part of the visual cortex in the brain, where the visual data is processed.
Whilst peripheral vision can provide useful information to fill out situation awareness, for a detailed study of a particular object we need to turn our eyes onto it.
So when we want to see something in detail – including the involuntary response that happens when we detect movement or light in peripheral vision – we do the same ‘eyes front’ thing that the pigeon does when it needs to land. At junctions we don’t stare straight out of the windscreen, trying to work out what’s coming from each direction via peripheral vision from both eyes simultaneously; we turn our heads to search in each direction in turn, in order to point these foveal cones of vision towards the specific area we’re searching.
Tracking, we’re keeping the bike firmly in the middle of our visual field… Image taken from ‘Look harder for bikes’ road safety video
Ryan talks about the issue of ‘tracking’ vehicles. The fact is we achieve this by looking directly at them. That implies we’ve already seen them and we’re not attempting to detect them. The difficulty of judging speed and distance occurs when we’re already looking at them.
DRIVERS TURNING INTO SIDE ROADS MISS BIKES TOO – If the pigeon vision issue really was a thing, how can we explain the fact that there are TWO collision types at junctions?
Whilst the collision with the driver who emerges from the turning on the nearside is the more common, a significant number of crashes involve an oncoming driver turning INTO the side road and across the driver’s path.
If the ‘looked but failed to see’ issue was really down to a chunk of the visual field being viewed only through one eye, these collisions shouldn’t happen – they’d be ideal circumstances for full binocular vision to detect the bike, then judge its speed to a nicety.
FAILED TO SEE ERRORS HAPPEN CLOSE UP – Ryan says that stereopsis is “the main method of gauging the speed of other vehicles… within thirty metres. I’ve no reason to argue with that, but let’s actually think about the collision dynamics.
30 mph is 13.4 metres per second. So thirty metres is something over two seconds away. Research into collisions suggests that the safe ‘cut-off’ when a rider is almost certain to avoid a collision is three seconds out from the crash – so something under fifty metres away at 30 mph. But at 60 mph, it’s getting on for one hundred metres away.
If Ryan’s figures are right, at rural road speeds the error happens well outside the limits of stereopsis. Even at urban speeds, the error in spotting the bike could happen right at the limits.
But even if the error did happen within the zone covered by stereopsis, there’s a second consideration. Even a rider who’s taken by SURPRISE! should be able to stop fairly comfortably within twenty five metres. I can – and have – stopped in about ten metres from 30 mph.
The three main reasons for collisions and junctions; the driver looked but COULD NOT see… the driver looked but FAILED to see… the driver looked, saw but MISJUDGED speed or distance…
So if the bike actually HITS the car, the error MUST have happened closer. A LOT closer. If a driver somehow fails to detect a motorcycle less than twenty five metres away, I don’t think it’s a speed / distance misjudgement (with one exception – see below). It’s far more likely the driver simply didn’t SEE the bike.
And that can happen because either the bike wasn’t VISIBLE when the driver looked (one in five of collisions) or the perception error was caused by one of the many PERCEPTUAL issues that fall under the ‘looked but failed to see’ umbrella (one in three collisions).
The bulk of ‘looked, saw but misjudged speed and distance’ errors (one in three collisions) seem to happen on faster roads where the bike is beyond the range of stereopsis, and we use the rate of change in size to judge approach speed – and now the difficulty in judging the lateral growth of a motorcycle most likely becomes crucial. The size of the machine only grows by a quarter, despite the distance halving.
(And dismiss the ‘driver didn’t look’ theory too – the proportion of collisions where the driver was distracted is tiny. If drivers genuinely ‘didn’t look’, they’d be bouncing off pedestrians, bikes, and buses – as well as other cars – every few seconds.)
OR THE RIDER WAS SPEEDING – Oddly enough, that researcher who found the pigeons scattered at the same distance from the car no matter what speed he approached at found something in common with drivers. We too gain a sense of how much time we have to turn at junctions based on the TYPICAL speed of vehicles.
So if ANY vehicle – not just a motorcycle – is travelling significantly quicker than average, that vehicle is far more likely to have a collision. It’s not the speed that caused it per se, although more speed means more difficulty stopping and a bigger impact if the rider hits something, other road users simply aren’t expecting the vehicle to be travelling at the excess speed, so don’t detect the anomaly easily and thus are more likely to turn across the rider’s path.
The horizontal line represents the speed limit, the vertical bars of the same colour represents the speed of the rider estimated by police
I don’t think it’s any coincidence that in a study of fatal bike crashes in the London area a few years ago, the majority of the deaths in the lower speed limits involved riders who were exceeding the limit. The horizontal lines in the chart represent the speed limit. The vertical bars are the estimated speeds of the riders who died.
AND DRIVERS COLLIDE WITH CARS TOO – Research from the Netherlands a few years ago looked at car-motorcycle and car-car detection errors, and adjusted the rates for EXPOSURE – that it, how many bikes and how many cars a driver would encounter in the same time frame. And what they found was that far from picking out bikes to collide with, drivers actually made the ‘looked but failed to see’ error in front of another car just as often as they made the error in front of a two-wheeler.
We always have to be a little careful about taking data from one country and exporting it to ‘fit’ our own roads and in this case the Netherlands has many more mopeds on the roads than the UK so there’s the possibility that drivers were more ‘bike-aware’. But there’s other evidence that hints that in countries where most vehicles are two-wheelers, bikers crash into bikers at much the same rate as car drivers.
We also have to remember that our own PERSONAL stories are looking through the opposite end of the lens. We may think that drivers are more likely to make a mistake in front of us on our bike than other riders, but the fact is we’ll encounter many more cars than bikes on a ride.
AND A FINAL NAIL – I didn’t even mention the fact that a substantial minority of the population have various eye issues which makes stereopsis impossible, yet manage to drive successfully.
CONCLUSION – The FortNine videos that Ryan fronts are often informative as well as entertaining to watch. But in this particular instance, I think the reasoning he uses is flawed. And hopefully I’ve explained this clearly enough that you can follow my own arguments. I’d be interested in your comments too, of course.
BUT HERE’S WHERE I DO AGREE – If there’s one bit of the video that I absolutely concur with, it’s Ryan’s comment after showing the old mid-70s ‘Think ONCE, think TWICE, think BIKE’ TV advert. I wonder where he found that?
Made in the mid-1970s, it’s still one of the best ‘think bike’ ads
He says about ‘think bike’, “he’s not wrong, but it’s not useful either. If we’re dealing with a sensory problem then imploring drivers to see better is like imploring a deaf person to listen up. I’d rather take my own responsibility…”
Spot on. Be proactive. Don’t wait to be seen. Assume you won’t be detected and ride with that in mind.
You can watch the FortNine video here:
You can find out more about the Science Of Being Seen project here:
I’m available to deliver the Science Of Being Seen (SOBS) presentation to clubs and groups around the UK IN PERSON, or anywhere in the WORLD via a WEBCAST, and at reasonable cost too.
‘Science Of Being Seen’ (SOBS) – an in-depth investigation of the most common motorcycle crash of all – the ‘Sorry Mate I Didn’t See You’ or ‘SMIDSY’ collision.
WHAT IS SOBS?
Science Of Being Seen (SOBS) looks at a very simple motorcycle safety issue – just why it might be that motorcycles aren’t seen by other road users as they approach junctions and intersections. The aim is to offer motorcyclists and drivers (and road safety practitioners too) a better understanding of how, where and why these collisions happen, and to give riders some simple and practical strategies for staying out of trouble, and to offer drivers some help to avoid making the error in the first place.
Although I’d been investigating the likely causes of the SMIDSY collision for many years, as well as suggesting some avoidance techniques to riders, the ‘Science Of Being Seen’ presentation was originally created by myself (Kevin Williams MSc) over the winter of 2011-2012 as the third ‘accident prevention’ module of Kent Fire & Rescue’s pilot ‘Biker Down’ course. SOBS explores a range of problems:
:: ‘looked but COULD NOT see’ collisions, where for various reasons – including ‘beam blindness’ and the ‘constant bearing issue’ – it was physically impossible for the driver to see the motorcycle in the run up to the crash :: ‘looked but FAILED TO see’ collisions, where the bike was in a place it could be seen but visual perception issues meant that the driver failed to spot the bike :: ‘looked, SAW AND FORGOT’ collisions where short term visual memory and workload issues meant that the driver was likely to have seen the bike but mentally lost track of it :: ‘looked, SAW AND MISJUDGED speed and distance’ collisions, which tend to happen on faster roads
SOBS takes an objective look at the effectiveness or otherwise of the usual ‘passive safety’ conspicuity aids – hi-vis clothing and day-riding lights (DRLs) – before suggesting some general rules to make them more effective.
Finally, SOBS looks at how motorcyclists can use pro-active techniques to avoid being caught up in a SMIDY collision.
The very first Biker Down course
A still from the original ‘Think once, think twice, THINK BIKE’ public information film
Kevin trainer and SOBS – Jim firefighter and crash scene management – Andy first responder and first aid 
At the Savoy for the Prince Michael of Kent award ceremony
Yes, that is Danny John-Jules – he came along to the Honda Biker Down event
The banner with the Science Of Being Seen website
Kevin at the Rochester Road Safety Experience, March 2020
I’ve been using this wonderful photo to illustrate the relationship between foreground and background colours, and conspicuity. 
Pink with sleeves – as recommended by SOBS
The tiger graphic from my SOBS presentations
Taking SOBS online to New Zealand audiences for Shiny Side up in Feb 2021
The business card with the essentials of SOBS given to Biker Down attendees by me
The most recent SOBS graphic
Science Of Being Seen 