Attending overtaking cars and motorcycles through the mirrors before changing lanes

Right of way violation crashes are the most common type of accidents that motorcyclists face. This study assessed right of way decisions in scenarios which require noticing whether there is traffic from behind that is about to overtake. A test was created which presents participants clips with a wide field of vision (from a driver’s perspective in a moving vehicle), with mirror information inset that allows either cars or motorcycles that are about to overtake, to be attended. Novice and experienced car drivers, and dual drivers (with both car and motorcycle experience), watched these clips while their eye movements were monitored.

The results indicated that in the rear-view and the right-side mirrors, and in the right hand lane, conflicting motorcycles garnered more attention than conflicting cars. This pattern however was particularly driven by the dual drivers group.

Additionally, novice drivers and dual drivers made more use of the right side mirror than the experienced drivers. Dual drivers also made more use of the rear view mirror than experienced drivers. Finally, significant positive correlations that were found between percentages of safe manoeuvres and measures of visual search provide direct evidence demonstrating that the frequency of risky manoeuvres was indeed larger in those cases where less time was spent gazing at the mirrors, indicating that the additional attention devoted to process conflicting vehicles contributes to reduce risky manoeuvres.

The general pattern of results also provides some indirect support that non-motorcyclist drivers are more likely to have ‘Look But Fail To See’ errors with conflicting motorcycles, than motorcyclist drivers.