One of the crashes that is mostly feared by riders out on the public streets is the one involving a car pulling-out in front of an incoming motorcycle. Well, here's a short experiment about depth perception that plays with the driver’s brain and makes this kind of accident happen.
It’s a known fact that motorcycles are almost invisible to car drivers, and each rider must operate his or her bike with that in mind. But there are moments when the drivers are aware of an oncoming two-wheeled vehicle and still try to force their way out of a side street or turn left in front of it.
One explanation for such things happening is that the human brain is more perceptive to large square-ish objects in traffic than small, narrow ones. The labeling process goes pretty much like this: big chunk of metal on wheels = harmful; small chunk of metal on wheels = harmless.
But even if the driver considers the bike a dangerous thing to cross paths with, there’s a second thing that comes to play and could possibly screw up the whole situation - depth perception.
As you’ll see in the experiment below, size does matter in depth perception. Let’s take the most obvious cut-off example - say you’re riding your bike in one lane, and there’s another car further back in the lane next to you. When a car wants to turn left, the driver’s brain will first notice the bigger, incoming car and then the bike.
But ‘thanks’ to depth perception, the bike that is closer will look almost the same size as the car behind. This will trick the brain into thinking the bike is as further back as the car and the driver will pull-out thinking there is time to make the turn. There’s no need to explain what happens next. I’ll just let you with the video to offer a more visual explanation.
Google News