Brains are expensive. It takes a lot for us to pay attention to stuff, and so, most of the time, even though we think we're paying attention to things, we're not.
Funny, but part of our mental resources are spent convincing us that we are paying attention to everything, so that we don't misallocate our attention-resources to things we don't need to be paying attention to. In other words, we don't want to spend time noticing the things that we're not noticing. Yes?
The literal blind spot in our field of vision is a perfect example. You probably don't even know you have one, but there's a sliver of your peripheral vision field that's invisible due to some wiring issues in our heads. But part of our brain makes up for that missing piece, filling it in, extrapolating from existing data, kind of like how photoshop can erase you from a picture, leaving only the background you're standing in front of.
Anyway, whether we are willing to believe it or not, there's a lot we don't notice. This is a problem for drivers, for sure, but it's much more of a problem for pedestrians.
If you, driver, pass the same intersection every day, and one out of every 1,000 times there's a person standing at the corner waiting to cross your lane, chances are you will not see that person. They are never, ever there, so why would you see them.
This is how the brain works. It predicts; it expects. It sees what it
thinks should be there based on previous experience. We can't treat every situation as brand new, because it takes too much of bandwidth. And we will not look for a pedestrian that might be there in a 1-in-1,000 chance.
Fortunately, there's some
really smart people thinking about this problem. University of Toronto engineering researchers working in Human Factors and Transportation say it's a consistency and predictability issue, and I am so happy to see someone with a bit of authority say this.
They say the problem is not that it's not the driver's behavior that needs to change, it's the infrastructure itself. And it's because of this energy-saving feature of the brain.
You can ask drivers to 'look both ways' all you want. They have way too much to worry about, and if pedestrians do not make up enough of their sensory environment, they will not waste precious attention on them.
I'm not an urban planner, but there's one thing I'm really adamant about it when I comes to traffic design. In the US, crosswalks are at the corner. In Europe, however, they are about 10 or 20 feet away from the corner. Maybe not everywhere, but in enough places that I certainly took notice of this change.
This is one of those things that makes travel and exposure to other cultures so valuable. The moment I saw this difference, I couldn't believe why we were doing it the wrong way, and that nobody ever says anything about it.
Studies like this support the European design; there is absolutely no way that a driver is paying attention as they turn.
And until then, another simple solution would be to just get more pedestrians! If every intersection had a wall of people waiting to cross every time you pass it, you will certainly pay attention to them.
Notes:
More than half of drivers don't look for cyclists and pedestrians before turning right, study finds
Aug 2018, phys.org
