Re: SMIDSY'ed: hit by a BT van
Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2013 11:45 pm
Good that you were looking in his mirror and able to see his face.
This demonstrates that you were in his field of view, but there's no guarantee that even if he had looked in the mirror he would have seen you.
Its what's known as "looked but didn't see" which is a common "human factors" problem.
It may seem like I'm being picky after the fact, but I believe that its important to learn from these little scrapes.
When I have them I like to analyse them and ask myself what I could have done differently to prevent it from happening so that I can avoid a recurrence.
It's too easy to just blame the dumb cagers and have a good rant, but adopting the victim mentality really doesn't teach you anything useful.
As for the lane, what's not often realised is that the arrows on their own are not mandatory.
TURN RIGHT has to be written on the road, if it isn't you can legally go straight on.
This demonstrates that you were in his field of view, but there's no guarantee that even if he had looked in the mirror he would have seen you.
Its what's known as "looked but didn't see" which is a common "human factors" problem.
It may seem like I'm being picky after the fact, but I believe that its important to learn from these little scrapes.
When I have them I like to analyse them and ask myself what I could have done differently to prevent it from happening so that I can avoid a recurrence.
It's too easy to just blame the dumb cagers and have a good rant, but adopting the victim mentality really doesn't teach you anything useful.
As for the lane, what's not often realised is that the arrows on their own are not mandatory.
TURN RIGHT has to be written on the road, if it isn't you can legally go straight on.