Sorry Mate, I didn`t see you .

[neptune]

I was sorry to hear that a friend of the family was knocked of her bike whilst cycling to work yesterday. The result was cuts and bruises , and the [pedal] bike had a badly bent rear wheel . It seems that the car , driven by an elderly woman, pulled out of a side road and hit the rear of the bike . The driver said "Sorry I didn`t see you, I was looking for cars." The driver agreed to pay for her bike to be repaired . I would have insisted on a new bike . When people can no longer see to drive , they should stop . As indeed, I did.

 

[eddieo]

Sounds like another candidate for the "bike butterfly" maybe we can get a special offer on them for Pedelec members.....These things can save lives!

 

[rog_london]

Not that I'm on the side of anyone who drives and knocks off a cyclist, but as one who does drive all sorts of vehicles from a bicycle up to (at present) a 25 ton truck - the latter not in the UK - I have some sympathy with the car driver. The human brain is a wonderful thing - it processes visual information without us realizing it, and one of its tricks is to disregard information it thinks is insignificant.

What has that to do with anything? Probably a whole lot in the classic 'sorry mate I didn't see you'' scenario. It's entirely possible for a motor vehicle driver to look fully at a cyclist (or a motorbike rider) and not see him or her at all - because unconsciously the brain is tuned to vehicles of a minimum size, and especially when viewed from the front a cyclist can be dismissed by the motorist's brain until suddenly 'you came out of nowhere' and a collision or near miss results.

I've never hit a cyclist or a motorcyclist because I didn't see him - but I've almost done it on more than one occasion, because I didn't register that they were there even though I'd seen them.

If there's a point to this, when we're on two wheels we should not be surprised when it happens, because it probably WILL happen. We all get older, and as motorists it's likely that we may become more prone to this sort of thing. All those 'think bike' campaigns are intended to make the motorist realize that there are relatively small vehicles on the road and they must guard against the brain's ability to look at and then dismiss them. Of course it doesn't always work, and a motorist might never realize that the danger exists until too late, and even then not understand what might have happened in order to learn from it.

Of course you've also got to be lucky - as a motorist or as a cyclist! Some say that the avoidance of accidents is not a matter of luck, but I think it must feature to some extent. We all have to give it a helping hand by being aware of what can happen, and why.

Rog.

 

[flecc]

Rog has got it exactly right, protection is a joint exercise and we have to do all we can to be seen by the car driver who won't always be tuned to small two wheelers on our large-vehicle clogged roads. Things like riding well away from the kerb, suddenly altering the cycling line if it's suspected the driver hasn't noticed the approach, and trying to catch the driver's eye all help.

 

[mike killay]

I read somewhere about a man who had been blind from birth and after an operation gained his eyesight.
Not only was he prepared to get out of upstairs windows being unable to guage the height, but apparently, at a bus stop could not see the driver in the front of the bus because he had never realised that a driver sat there.
I think that it is something like this for motorists. Time and time again I have heard the 'Didn't see you' explanation and I think that the reason given by rog london above is the explanation of this phenomenon.
Less than an hour ago, a Range Rover pulled out of a side turning in front of me, stopped halfway, not because of me but for a car, I gently ran into his door so I wasn't hurt, but the look on his face of shock was a great reward!