Motorists urged to ‘see bike say bike’ at junctions

THE University of Nottingham has found that is car drivers audibly say the word ‘bike’ when seeing one at a junction it could drastically reduce the chances of a SMIDSY type accident.

Motorcyclists are involved in more crashes for the distance they travel than most other powered road users. One of the most common and frightening incidents for a motorcyclists being another road user pulling out in front of them.

These crashes, commonly called the SMIDSY (Sorry Mate I Didn’t See You) have previously been interpreted as failures to see the bikes, although a professor at the University of Nottingham thinks it is more to do with forgetting they were there at all.

Dr Peter Chapman has conducted research that he claims proves that car drivers see the bike on the road but that their brain ‘forgets’ it is there at all.

The study found that drivers were five times more likely to fail to act to an oncoming motorcycle than you would be if a car was positioned in the same place and at the same speed. Dr Chapman and his team have not completely got to the bottom of why a car driver does this, but they think the car driver’s brain becomes distracted between the time they see the bike and when they decide to pull out.

SMIDSY accidents (or as Dr Chapman calls Saw But Forgot) can claim up to 90 lives in the UK, and it’s thought that the ‘See Bike Say Bike’ initiative could massively reduce those numbers.

The theory is that speaking the word bike when you see one approaching at a junction could help to strengthen the memory of seeing the motorcycle, helping to prevent the brain from overwriting it with what the driver wants for tea or how late they are for that meeting.

Should driver need to resort to these nursery-rhyme type of memory games to help them become safer drivers – or would harsher penalties for dangerous and careless driving help more?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.