Target Fixation: Seeing the Whole Picture

The argument goes something like this…

A motorist could possibly become fixated on a cyclist's rear (or front) flasher. Instead of helping a motorist see and avoid you, it can wind up drawing one, especially an impaired one, right to you. Its called target fixation (or the moth effect as in "…like a moth to a flame...") and its an argument used to suggest among other things that its safer to ride with steady lights instead of flashers, dimmer lights instead of brighter and even without lights instead of with. In a nutshell, this provocative argument runs entirely contrary to the conventional cycling wisdom that with greater visibility comes greater safety.

The web is rife with examples of hard-to-explain accidents, frequently involving some kind of vehicle steered by a human with a combination of hands and/or shifting body weight, where the cause is attributed to target fixation; flying, surfing, paragliding, motorcycling, skateboarding, biking, and driving to name a few. Such accidents often appear totally bizarre and surprising to observers. Observers explain that they thought both the hazard and the way around it were plainly obvious, that the driver (or flyer or surfer or whatever) had ample time to both see and react to avoid the hazard and instead, for some inexplicable reason, wound up driving (or flying or surfing or whatever) directly into it, almost appearing as though they had no choice in the matter. Such is the peculiarity of target fixation phenomena. The video below is a good example.

You can see the motorcycle driver, about half way through his turn, get out of his lean too look forward at something that grabs his attention. When he gets out of his lean, the motorcycle drifts to the far right hand side of the road and he appears to just drive directly into two cyclists.

The phrase "target fixation" was originally coined in the 1940's by U.S. military flight instructors to explain repeated incidents where pilots on strafing and bombing runs would sometimes wind up flying their planes right into the targets they were focused on destroying. Over time, the concept has gained broader appeal in explaining a wide range of accidents with similar attributes...

• A machine, steered with the hands and/or shifting body weight.
• An operator gazes and focuses attention on something, often a hazard, in their field of view.
• The operator's hands/body tend to lean, twist, shift weight, in the direction of gaze.
• The machine, even if subtly, winds up moving in the direction of gaze.
• Before the operator is concsiously aware, s/he is heading directly at the hazard.
• The operator is often taken totally by surprise by the realization that s/he is now headed right at the hazard and then locks up, unable to react to safely avoid it.

The solution? Look in the direction you want to go. The body will follow the look. The machine will follow the body.

I have experienced this myself while cycling. I see a hazard on the road ahead like a pothole, a branch or some flat hazard. If I stare at it, I can wind up running right over it. I've also experience something like it will driving too. I have seen some very odd vehicle configuration ahead of me on the road. It is something I have never seen before. It looks strange, odd, interesting. I wind up staring at it trying to figure what the heck I am looking at. While all my attention is focused on that, although my vehicle is still well within my lane, I am not paying attention to traffic stopping in front of me.

Consider both sides of the argument

So I do not dispute that the phenomena of target fixation is real. However, I get concerned when anyone makes an attempt to use target fixation as an argument to justify suggesting cyclists would be safer not using taillights, either bright or flashing ones, during night riding. You have to consider the whole picture here.

Certainly, the phenomena of target fixation is a potential risk. My understanding from materials I have read is that it is a more likely to occur in an impaired driver. That is, a driver that might be under the influence. However, what is the greater risk? Riding with bright and/or flashing taillights and encountering an impaired driver that might get fixated and then hit you or riding with no taillights whatsoever and getting hit because a driver doesn't see you or, perhaps almost as bad, causing that driver to have an accident because they are caught by surprise encountering you in the dark, overreact to avoid you at the last moment and wind up injuring themselves?

Lets walk through that again. For target fixation to be the cause of your injury, several things have to happen. You have to encounter an impaired driver. That driver has to become fixated on your taillight. The fixation has to be such that they do indeed wind up hitting you as opposed to a near miss because they react soon enough to avoid an accident. Note that the odds of encountering an impaired driver remain the same regardless of whether you are using a taillight.

On the other hand, consider what has to happen to be injured riding without any taillight. You have to encounter a driver (any driver impaired or not). That's it. That's all that has to happen! On roads without any shoulder, there is typically not enough space for a car and a bike to safely pass each other, especially if the bike's line of track is a typical 1-2 feet inwards from the roadside. The driver must take evasive action just to avoid hitting a bike. If they can't see you, or can't see you soon enough in advance, that won't happen and you'll be hit.

So, while there may be a statistically measurable increase in the likelihood that a cyclist could become the victim of a target fixation accident as a result of using such lights, there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that there would be a substantially higher likelihood of being the victim of an accident simply because a driver is unable to see them in the dark.

Other issues with bike taillights

Now, there are some other issues with respect to cycling taillights that are probably worth more to worry about than target fixation. As you might reasonably conclude, observers have more difficulty judging distance and speed to a target that is intermittently visible (e.g. a rear flasher on a dark night) than one that is always visible (e.g. a taillight that is constant on). On the other hand, a flashing light tends to draw attention to itself more easily than a constant light. For this reason, I've heard many cyclists suggest riding with two lights; one flasher and one constant. Seems like a good idea.

Next, there is the question of motorist's visual familiarity and practice of observing and identifying nighttime traffic hazards. The fact is, we all have practice identifying taillights of vehicles ahead of us on the road. Those lights are large, at least the size of our hands or bigger, constant on, come in pairs (a left and a right taillight). Taillights used in cycling are smaller, about the size of our thumb, are often flashing, sometimes in very bizarre patterns that are strange to unfamiliar observers, and of course do not come in pairs. This suggests using unusual or bizarre flashing patterns for rear taillights may not be the best thing for night riding.

For these reasons, it is reasonable to consider whether many motorists might be unfamiliar with this kind of flasher and upon seeing one for the first time, or at rare times, may wind up spending more attention (e.g. fixating) than one might think trying to figure out what they are seeing. That certainly reads suspiciously a target fixation scenario.

Lastly, if a motorist happened to confuse a dim constant on cycling taillight with a car taillight, the fact that its a smaller light might actually cause a serious misjudgement of distance; the motorist might think the vehicle is much further way than it actually is based on size. This is a good reason not to let your cycling taillight run low on battery power. A healthy battery in a cycling rear flasher often generates enough light to counteract any natural attempts to judge its true size.

In fact, I have experience with a driving problem similar to this with the headlight separation on Saturn sedans. Saturn manufactured its sedans with unusually closely separated headlights. When passing slower traffic on two-lane roads, the headlights from oncoming vehicles are a visual cue for estimating distance. Headlight separation is part of this. When observing an oncoming vehicle in the opposing lane, the closer together the headlights are, the further away the vehicle is. But, because Saturn's sedans have unusually close headlight separation, they can falsely appear further away than they really are causing a harmful misjudgement of distance. If their headlights were more separated than unusual, they would appear closer than they actual are and that would be harmless.