Collison Detail Recall...maybe not so accurate as you think!

[Sheffield_Tiger]

Not on a bicycle but I think this is relevant to road use in general and how the mind recalls things...

I was involved in a shunt in the company car the other day (as the lead vehicle, with no apparent damage to the company vehicle but still involved so will probably be called upon by the other parties' insurers as the car sandwiched between mine and the rear car who did the shunt did have significant damage..

In my mind what happened is that I stopped at the red traffic light, then was hit from behind..it was all quite clear.

As luck would have it, we are on a one way system and out car park CCTV just catches the road outside, I had gone around the one way to head back on myself to the direction I needed to go..and the collision occured just in our Camera #2 field of view

I was surprised to find that what had happened was that I had gone through the (green) light and had to slow for a car ahead stopping to turn right into our car park. (No sudden stops so vindicated there..), and so can see the whole thing unfold...but..wow..cameras really are invaluable. I was so sure of my version of events in my mind and on the details of why I stopped, I was quite wrong. Probably unusual to see an incident on a "3rd party" POV and it surprised me!

Definitely going to keep my camera on the bike as much as possible, even if it is low quality...I never realised how much of something you can get quite wrong on recall!

 

[ColinJ]

I had a near miss last week which I first thought was due to me not noticing that a driver in front of me was turning right and I went to overtake him.

I had to replay it in my mind several times before I could make sense of it.

Eventually, I remembered that the reason I was overtaking was because he had stopped. I had seen his indicator, but he had just pulled out to pass a parked car which is what I thought the signal was for. He had then reversed in behind the front of that car and stopped so I assumed that it was impromptu parking when he spotted a space.

So, yes, memory is a funny thing. If you had asked me 5 seconds after I nearly hit the driver's door, I would have said that it was mostly my fault. Now, I would say that the driver did a very odd thing, and seemed to have forgotten that he had pulled out in front of me about 100 metres up the road so he should have remembered that I was there and even if he didn't, he should have looked before pulling back out!