Back in the 1990s, researchers carried out a famous experiment into people’s attention. They showed study participants a video of people passing basketballs, and asked them to count the number of passes players in white shirts made to each other.
Most people scored OK at this but failed to notice that someone in a gorilla suit walked through the middle of the players partway through the video. This was given as proof that the brain is poor at noticing things it does not expect to see when it is concentrated on another task. They termed the phenomenon “inattentional blindness,” and, ever since, it’s been used to explain why drivers so often fail to spot cyclists or motorcyclists and pull out in front of them. The theory being that they are focused on looking out for other four-wheeled vehicles, not two-wheeled ones.
New research adds nuance to this
In 2023, a research team from NYU’s Center for Data Science and Department of Psychology decided to rerun the experiment and throw in some variation regarding how the gorilla moved.
They found that people still tended to miss the gorilla when it moved slowly and upright, like in the original experiment. But, they were much better at spotting it when it moved faster, or leaped instead of walking. It stands to reason if you think about how we evolved from having to watch out for dangerous animals of the plains of Africa. If you watch cats hunt, they usually creep up to their target unnoticed. Their intended prey only notices them when they move in fast for the kill (by which time escape is usually impossible).
Does this mean you should speed up if you see a driver who looks like they might pull out in front of you? No, not at all, as that would make any crash worse. However, adding in a bit of side-to-side movement, rather than approaching in a dead straight line, might help catch their attention. Above all, just know that a driver who appears to be looking at you may not be seeing you at all.
