Fixation can get us into trouble faster than we can blink an eye. For some reason, our human tendency is to focus on the object that caused our attention shift for too long. Maybe a left over as a survival instinct from the days of roaming the Savanna, we focus on the danger until we think we’re safe.
Don’t stare at the target too long!
Problem is, when operating a vehicle, the delay we experience in deciding what action to take can be just a little too much time and result in an undesired outcome. Everything is moving faster than we can process so we have to keep our attention moving.
Let’s say you’re motoring along on your bike and the driver in front of you decides it’s time to make a turn to the left, suddenly. They hit their brakes and start slowing much faster than you’d expect and begin to ease left. In the few thousandths of a second it takes you to realize what’s happening, you focus on the danger and apply your brakes. The focus is the back end of the car in front of you that’s coming up fast. You need more brakes and squeeze harder.
If you’re lucky, your brakes and tires work well together and you stop short of an ugly dismount at the back of the car. Maybe a few choice words come forward, you get hit by the adrenalin rush, then take off again muttering expletives.
It could have been worse though. The car behind you might not have had good brakes, tires or reaction time, and although you’ve been successful, you may still become the meat in a car sandwich.
Going back, if you’d had the presence of mind to override millennia of human survival instinct (grabbing brakes), you’d have done what I’ve seen Italian drivers do to break fixation: maneuver to avoid in the direction most likely to result in a favorable outcome.
In other words, you’d have aimed for the opening to the right, between the curb and the car, made the direction change and began the braking process, applying the horn as you passed on the right, a voluminous protest to yet another driver’s gross ineptitude. Although illegal in most states, that savvy move is justifiable to a lawman as reasonable and prudent in the face of a potential accident/injury.
Give it some thought. Develop a plan and be ready to act decisively when you need to. Don’t worry about law enforcement challenging you. You avoided fixation and did the safe thing.
There’s an old saying: “It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.”