SMARTER President Dan Petterson, Ed.D. presented a workshop session titled Inattentional Blindness: what drivers can do to avoid the Looked But Failed to See crash with motorcyclists at the national conference of the State Motorcycle Safety Association held in Columbus, OH September 13-16.
Blocked vision, inattentional blindness, saccadic masking, motion camouflage and size-arrival effect all come into play when drivers search for hazards at intersections.
Understanding of these phenomena underlie the “what can drivers do?” question. A video produced by Michigan Department of State which presents an enhanced search procedure developed by SMARTER was a part of the presentation and can be accessed at https://www.michigan.gov/looktwice.