I Never Saw The Vehicle, Officer

Interesting study from 2007 from Steven Most and Robert Atsur, published in Visual Cognition. It is entitled "Feature-based attentional set as a cause of traffic accidents". This research used a driving simulation program that required participants to navigate through streets, following directional arrows of a certain color (yellow or blue). They were instructed to brake only for pedestrians or other vehicles. At the 10th intersection, a yellow or blue motorcycle heads straight for the driver and turns into his/her path. The study compared the average brake times and the collision rates between the group that was presented with a color-matched motorcycle and those with a color-mismatched motorcycle.

Those who faced a motorcycle that matched the arrow-color that they were looking for were quicker to brake, and had a significantly lower likelihood of crashing into the cycle. So, clearly, as the brain is focused on a given feature (in this case, a certain color), the introduction of otherwise clear obstacles that are outside that feature set are more difficult for the brain to register.

This is akin to that viral video a few years ago with a group of students passing around a ball. A subject is asked to count the number of passes made by the team in white shirts. In the meantime, a black gorilla mascot walks straight through the circle of students. Study subjects are asked later (a) how many passes did you count, and (b) did you notice anything unusual? Many subjects were dumbfounded to learn that there was a gorilla at all.

Here are several other examples from the same researcher.

The paper suggests some real-world applications of this conclusion, though it's difficult for me to make much of them. One group took that gorilla concept to make an ad warning drivers to watch out for cyclists.