Blind Spot Mirrors 741

My thoughts entirely and my reason for fitting blind spot mirrors and wanting to start this thread about it. I just don't hear mention of them much. I will usually glance to about 45 degrees as my final check just before I move out to overtake on a motorway, which just brings the blind spot area into my peripheral vision, but there are times when I cannot take my eyes off the road in front and rely 100% on the blind spot mirror. Of course 99% of the time I am aware of the cars overtaking and not happy until the car I saw in my other mirrors has reappeared. I seem to automatically keep a tally of the cars coming up and note the colur of the car about to overtake and wait for it to reappear, of cause its not 100% and I rely on the blind spot mirror as a double check.

I wouldn't feel safe moving my head more than about 45 degrees as I'd loose front vision totally. At 45 degrees, I still have some peripheral front vision for the 1.5 seconds my eyes are not focused ahead. I personally cannot get FULL front attention back much under two seconds. About a second to move head back and forth and half a second to refocus to distance. I could do it quicker, but not sure I really see, even though I'm looking. Getting away from the motorway for a moment, I found you can miss things doing those quick right-left right looks at junctions. If I move my head-eyes too fast I see the view at the start and end of the head turn, but inbetween is not certain, even though my brain tells me I have looked. I now move my head with slight stops during the scan. Its almost continuous but with tiny little stops that give me the view in between.

Its a fact that moving head fast will miss stuff in between the start and end of the head turn. The brain fills in the information in between from what is knows should be there from a few moments ago. I'm convinced this is why we get the "Just didn't see it" syndrome. We are effectively blind during a fast head turn and the brain just joins up the start and end view. Try it. You just get start and end positions and nowt in between apart from what the brain thinks is there. This is why a cut between two scenes in film doesn't jar or look odd. We don't even notice it happening, but try and consciously count the cuts in any scene on tv and you soon get fed up counting. Getting back to motorway. One other thing is when my view focusses ahead after a quick side check, there can be a delay before we see. Only half a second, but it happens. Its the same as when you look at a clock with a sweep second hand. The second hand seems to stay still for a moment longer than reality.

bucket