Many of you may have seen the original video produced by Transport for London called “Do The Test”. Well, they’ve done it again, offering us a new video test with a powerful message. Enjoy:
And for those of you who missed the first one, here it is:
Great stuff!
Popularity: 10% [?]
These are ridiculous “awareness” tests. People keep beating these as a drum for driver awareness. I would hope that more people would find these videos insulting to their intelligence.
The context is to pay attention to some other detail and, in the case of the first video, they explicity indicate that you should watch one particular item. In the case of driving, a driver is under instructions to watch the road and be aware of the environment as it relates to the car. The driver is NOT instructed to pay attention to whether or not the sandwich board for the grade school said, “AYBABTU” or whether Miss Pettigrew has a new bunny.
I have to disagree. Drivers may be told to pay attention to everything, but how many of them (myself included) do. You learn very quickly where obstacles come from, and that’s what you watch. Other cars, pedestrians, etc. Having it pointed out that there is something out there you may not have been paying attention to is a bad thing.
How many accidents have we heard about where the driver reports, “I just didn’t see him” or “She wasn’t there a second ago?” All these do is reduce that risk, or at least make people aware of bicycles as a potential road obstacle.
In the “real” world our experience teaches us that physical things behave. That post will almost certainly remain in the ground, straight, same colour etc. This allows our attention to be focussed on what is likely to be useful or important in a given context – the films just prove how well we do this?
In the same way using a phone takes us out of the very real world outside our steel box and increases the risk we will do damage…
I wrote an article some years ago on risk assessment as a cycling. Basically, everything has at least a minimum risk assessment of 1 (on a scale of 1 to 10). Even a seemingly inert trash can on the side of the road can suddenly be a problem when a pack of raccoons jump out of it- right in front of you. So, yeah- look at everything at least once, and some things twice.
Especially the stuff that looks harmless.
