Our roads are crowded with more and more vehicles every year, and people always seem to be in a hurry. Sharing the road is vitally important. Drivers have the utmost obligation to those most at risk: pedestrians.
It is vital to keep the safety of those not protected inside of vehicles in mind because if an accident occurs, their consequences will usually be the worst. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there are over 75,000 pedestrian accidents in the United States each year resulting in over 5,000 deaths. That is equivalent to one pedestrian killed every 105 minutes or every hour and a half. Pedestrian injuries occur every seven minutes or less.
Similar to difficulties in observing motorcycles, if you don’t expect to see a pedestrian, your brain will often ignore them even though they may be right in front of you. It’s possible the eye won’t get around to focusing on the pedestrian long enough for the brain to actually process it until it is too late. This odd phenomenon is known as selective attention. For more details on the science of selective attention see the link below.