You’re riding your motorcycle to work when you see a pickup truck waiting to pull out of a driveway. You have the right way since you’re already on the road, and the truck driver should wait for you. In fact, as you grow closer to the vehicle, you watch the driver turn their head straight in your direction. They must have seen you.
However, the driver suddenly pulls out at the last second, cutting off your bike. As you hit the side of the truck, you wonder how they possibly cut you off when they just looked at you. What has happened here?
Understanding inattentional blindness
There are a few different reasons why this could happen. The driver could be fatigued, visually impaired, under the influence, in a hurry or something of this nature. Maybe they just made a mistake.
But there’s another issue called intentional blindness, where drivers actually do not see vehicles that they are not looking for. As your brain sorts through the information being sent by your eyes and other sensory organs, it filters out things that it deems unimportant. Often, this means that a person sees what they expect to see when looking at a given scene.
If that truck driver never sees motorcycles coming down the road, they may not have been expecting to see one. Even though they looked at you, their brain filtered the motorcycle out and they never saw the vehicle. That may be why they turned in front of you.
Seeking compensation
Regardless of exactly why they caused the accident, you could still be facing substantial medical bills. Make sure you know what legal steps to take in this scenario.
