How's My Driving Blog

Where drivers are really looking?

Have you ever wondered where drivers are really looking when they are driving? Well Direct Line Car Insurance have recently commissioned an eye tracking experiment to establish where motorist’s eyes are focussed.

A study which used glasses to track the movements of the cornea in the eye to monitor driver behaviour, the study found some shocking results. Drivers involved in the experiment failed to notice 22% of cyclists on the road – despite them being in clear view!

Here are more of the results from the experiment:

• Drivers did spot 96% of all pedestrians who stepped out into the road, even those who did not use a crossing.
• The experiment suggests that motorists who use sat nav devices are much less likely to spot a cyclist, with 24% of cyclists going unseen, in comparison to 19% of cyclists who were unseen by those not using a sat nav. Suggesting that sat navs may take some of your concentration away from the road, in particular the awareness of cyclists.
• Female drivers spotted 74% of cyclists in comparison to males, who noticed 83%.
• Younger drivers aged 20-29 years, spotted 61% of cyclists, compared to those aged 50-59 years who saw 79% of cyclists.

The UK roads are very busy, dangerous and congested places and it seems from this experiment that millions of cyclists are going unseen. Although this experiment is not inclusive of all road users, it does give us a better understanding of where people focus their eyes when driving. It is important that we are tackling this problem head on, with more and more cycle schemes out there persuading people to cycle, especially the great cycle to work scheme, we should be ensuring that our drivers are aware of cyclists on the road!

How’s My Driving has started to tackle this critical road safety issue, we have launched a Cycle Badge Scheme aimed at Large Goods Vehicles (LGV), fleet customers and cyclists to try and help reduce the number of accidents on the roads. The badge design shows a hazard warning for cyclists about the dangers of passing HGVs on the road.