In many (most?) of those cases GB it's because the rider had no choice but to hit the vehicle that cut them off or pulled out/turned in front of them... Have come very close a number of times in those situations. Not saying that there aren't bikers at fault and who create accidents. Just saying the vast majority are not the biker's fault.
I would like to see the data that supports that, tho I do understand, that anyone that pulls out in front of any kind of vehicle is usually at fault.
I'll address both this and bills vs beaks comments...
The motorcycle drivers/rider's manual and the article are written for cycle riders specifically, which is why neither address the 4 wheeler's responsibilities.
I do think the 'filters out' thing is kind of accurate tho is a bit of a misnomer.
There is a term in AI/computing called prefetching. It is where images or files are brought into high speed memory before it is even fully processed. It's data that is loaded before it is required for use.
The human brain processes thoughts and images extremely fast, but not nearly fast enough to be considered to be 'in real time'. To offset this lag, our brains automatically tend to 'pre load' or 'pre fetch' images based upon the last thing it 'saw'.
You're driving down the road, there's an 18 wheeler, a few 4 wheelers in front of you, and you look in your rear view mirror for a second...look back forward and your brain has already presented to you the last image it saw from the front view....that is what you expect to see, but in a split second, it processes what your eyes actually see. A lot can happen in that split second, and it's not so much what you 'see' that causes the problem, but how how long it takes for the neurons to commit your muscles into acting on what is actually there.
You stop at a stop sign, see a 4 wheeler coming and nothing behind it. That's imprinted into high speed memory and prefetched the next time you look after the car passes. If something else has entered the real world picture in that time span, it doesn't register immediately..takes a split second for the new and real image to show up in your mind. Meanwhile, you're already out at least part way in the lane....disaster has happened.
This is especially true on roads and everyday situations you've encountered time after time. You (thru your brain)
expect to see certain things simply because you have so many times. Throw something different into the paradigm and it takes your eye/brain/muscle trio a bit of time to understand it because of the form of 'prefetching' our brains do.
You can see an example of this when someone moves everything around in a room you are very accustomed to entering. Even before you open the door, your brain is already preparing an image based solely upon all the other times you walked into the room.
Change your wallpaper on your computer display or phone one night before retiring to bed. The next morning, when you first look at the display, you 'expect' to see the familiar old picture, and for a spit second, do. Your brain has already pulled that old familiar image from cache and presented it to you, but in the blink of an eye, you remember you changed it.
Lets say that tonight, while we are asleep, BYH thru admin, has totally changed it's appearance. We click on our bookmark, the page loads and we are fully expecting to see what we have always seen, and for a brief moment in time..do, til our brain fully processes that a visual change has taken place.
I got a good dose of this phenomenon last year when the flood came..several actually. The water came up overnight. Last thing I saw before dark was my cows on pasture, green grass, and the inside of my shop just as it always had been. At first light, I look out the window and my brain presented the usual image, for a split second until it processed the ocean. A little while later, as I waded in 3 ft of water to my shop to get a rope, 2 things came to mind.
1. If I open this door all this water is going to rush in, which was foolish because I know my shop is nowhere near waterproof.
2. But, when I did open the door, my brain had pre fetched the image of my shop, with it's dry cement floor and all my 'stuff' neatly arranged. Took but the blink of an eye for the real image of all my stuff submerged or floating around to register.
A LOT tho, can happen on a highway in the blink of an eye.
