Inattentional blindness is a condition that can sometimes lead to car accidents. As the name suggests, it is a form of visual blindness that is linked to a lack of attention someone is paying to their surroundings.
The key thing to remember about this phenomenon is that the brain is constantly working to sort all of the information a person is exposed to at any given moment. This includes sights, sounds, smells and much more.
This all takes up a significant amount of bandwidth. To speed up processing, the brain tends to fill in gaps in a person’s visual field. It prioritizes the most important thing someone is looking at, but much else is just based on what they expect to see or what makes sense in that situation.
Why would that lead to a car accident?
This is a major issue with motorcycle accidents in particular. Many drivers are simply not expecting to see motorcycles.
For instance, say that someone is waiting to pull out of their driveway. They quickly glance both ways to make sure the road is empty. Then they pull out into the road, and a motorcycle hits the side of their car.
If that driver was not expecting to see a motorcycle, it’s possible they could have looked directly at it without the bike actually registering in their visual field. They were expecting to see cars and trucks, so they instead saw what appeared to be an empty road.
Seeking compensation
This is still a form of negligence because drivers should take long enough to fully absorb all the information and make correct decisions. If you’ve been injured in a motorcycle accident, take the time to look into your legal rights to seek financial compensation.
