[ST] You're not a target, they can't even see you!

["MCH & Little Salem" <LittleSalem@xxxxxxxxx>]

This is secondhand knowledge, hearsay even, because I'm relating from memory
a news magazine report read sometime in the recent past.  A hypothesis was
concocted to investigate the problem of SMIDSY (Sorry, mate.  I didn't see
you.)  You see, we motorcyclists are not the only people amazed by the vast
numbers of accidents involving bikes and cars ending with the drivers'
sincerely made complaint that the creatures on two wheels came out of
nowhere.

The challenge was to test the ability of observers to deal with visual
clutter while performing a task that required concentration:  Some research
shrink placed a group of several folks in a room and showed them a film.  On
the film a group of people dribbled basketballs.  The balls were of two
colors.  Some of the subjects were asked to count the number of times the
balls of one color were bounced.  The remainder of the group were asked to
count the number of times the balls differently colored were bounced.  The
film lasted for about ten minutes with this silliness going on.  However,
there was a gag.  Halfway through the film, a man dressed in a gorilla suit
walked on-screen, stopped to act apelike, and then continued passing through
the scene.  When the film was over, most of the subjects did not remember
seeing the man in the gorilla suit, accused the examiner of trying to trick
them, and hotly denied any such person was in the film.  Of course, they
were given another opportunity to view the film and see the error of their
ways.

The moral of the story?  Frustrated and frazzled commuters are frequently so
overburdened by the task of driving through visually complex environments
that the unexpected becomes invisible.  Yep, we're visually imperceptible,
transparent as the air.  We ride in the weird little spaces between
peripheral vision and the twilight zone.  They can't see us.  I suppose we
should ride as if we know that.  I have forsaken the practice of demanding
my rights as a fully legal motorist from the cagers.  Share the road?  Sure,
I take whatever they give me, or I move quickly enough to take as much as I
can before somebody slams the door on my tail.  A dawg's got to be smart to
survive.  Be careful out there.

Smitty

"It's true, anyone of us could snap and vaporize a planet or two.  Myself
included, of course."
     -- Hakubi Washu



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