Car Drivers’ Attitudes and Visual Skills in Relation to Motorcyclists

Motorcyclists are grossly overrepresented in the crash statistics, but many collisions are actually caused by other road users. Previous research has suggested that poor attitudes (e.g. lack of empathy with motorcyclists) or perceptual problems (e.g. Look But Fail To See errors) may help explain why car drivers collide with motorcyclists.

Three studies were undertaken to address these issues. Introduced in Study 1 induced a self-reported improvement in attitude following a presentation of hazardous video clips from a motorcyclist’s perspective. Identified in Study 2 is the perceptual measures that might lead to Look But Fail To See errors. Study 3 demonstrated the difficulties in trying to train perceptual strategies to overcome these problems.