My appalling cycling tonight

[johnnyb47]

Hi, again
Tonight im ashamed to admit my cycling was nothing to be desired. If it wasn't for the quick reactions of the lady motorist im sure i would of ended up bouncing off her car. I came to a T junction and for the life of me i didn't see the oncoming car. Obviously i wasn't paying enough attention and cut right in front, and then panicked when i saw it right on top of me. Thankfully the quick reactions of the lady driver stopped just before hitting me. I apologised and thanked her for her good driving but she didn't look to impressed ( and rightly so) I felt a right burk and shakened up.
I'm just going to put this down to experience and learn from my mistakes. 😔

 

[Pat "5mph"]

You must have been tired.
Good of the lady driver, she had her wits about.

 

[johnnyb47]

I felt so embarrassed making such a blatant stupid mistake. Im afraid I've given cyclists a bad name tonight 😕

 

[C R]

Hi, again
Tonight im ashamed to admit my cycling was nothing to be desired. If it wasn't for the quick reactions of the lady motorist im sure i would of ended up bouncing off her car. I came to a T junction and for the life of me i didn't see the oncoming car. Obviously i wasn't paying enough attention and cut right in front, and then panicked when i saw it right on top of me. Thankfully the quick reactions of the lady driver stopped just before hitting me. I apologised and thanked her for her good driving but she didn't look to impressed ( and rightly so) I felt a right burk and shakened up.
I'm just going to put this down to experience and learn from my mistakes. 😔

At least you have enough self awareness to recognise your mistake, and hence learn from it.

 

[welsh dragon]

We all make mistakes whether we are on a bike or in a car.

At least you acknowledged your mistake and hopefully have learned a valuable lesson which is more than some do.

 

[Drago]

You're admitting today's shortcomings and accepting responsibility. thats the first step towards rehabilitation.

 

[ianrauk]

I think we've all.been there at one time or another

 

[Slick]

I think we've all.been there at one time or another

Definitely. I typed out what mine was then deleted it.

 

[Shearwater Missile]

Sorry to hear about the incident and glad that you are OK. What it will hopefully do is make you more aware in future and make you safer as a result.

 

[graham bowers]

Glad you got away with it. The science of "not seeing" things is quite interesting.

 

[Arjimlad]

Guilty of similar.. thought an HGV was turning right but he wasn't & had to get out of his way PDQ - stay frosty !

 

[Milkfloat]

To even things up @johnnyb47 a lady in a BMW pulled out in front of me on my commute home. Luckily my spider sense kicked in and I grabbed handfuls of brake. So no need to feel bad.

 

[johnnyb47]

I suppose the moral of all this is, whether if its the cyclist fault or the motorist, the cyclist will always come off worst. We have to be so careful nowadays out on our roads

 

[12boy]

At least you are alive and unmaimed. Better than unhumiliated and dead.

 

[Racing roadkill]

What you’ve discovered there, is that the eyes look, but the brain sees. What you’ve described there is when your brain starts to ‘target select’ ( there is an official name for it, but I’ve forgotten what it is ). It’s basically the brain filtering out what it perceives to be erroneous information, because there’s only so much processing it can cope with. If you are approaching a junction ( for example ) and your relative speed to an object approaching from the side, is similar, effectively the object is stationary, so even though it’s in plain sight, your brain decides it’s no threat, so discards it. You effectively don’t see something in plain view. “It / they came out of nowhere” is the phrase that’s commonly heard, when this happens. Fighter pilots are trained to overcome this by constantly changing their head position, whilst engaging another aircraft. If you’re riding / driving, you can help it by deliberately altering your speed, or course, slightly, approaching junctions and / or roundabouts. That way, any approaching objects, aren’t effectively stationary, and you’ll be surprised how often something suddenly appears, which was always actually there. Look, look, and look again, near junctions and RABs.