This one is not stupid.

http://skepchick.org/blog/?p=1124#more-1124

The dancing bear-suited man, however, is there. It's the same video. I watched it, got 13 passes, and didn't see the bear at all. I was convinced the bear couldn't have been in the first play of the video, so I watched again. And he was.

Sorry, Doug, I missed it.

Maybe this is why Lindy West is the only one at the Stranger who goes to the movies to have a good time instead of bitch about like whether there are saber tooth tigers in Africa or if the director is ripping off fucking Milos Forman or what the fuck ever.

However, the point of the commerical relies on the observation that many drivers shove the watch-out-for-bikes-and-pedestrians awareness as a lower priority thing. Having driven and having been a pedestrian, this is absolutely true - almost anywhere you are in the world.

thanks Navy

If it's easy to miss something I'm not looking for, then I shouldn't be looking for bicyclists...since I'm Supposed to miss them and not hit them, right? I know...I know...they're trying to make a point. It's making a better point about the reliability of witnesses though I think.

If I found myself driving in traffic that was that visually confusing I think I might just want to pull over and wait for it to sort itself out.

This, however, is the fault of crap internet videos, not the commercial.

Which leads me to believe that perhaps costumed bicyclists take more precautions against people like me.

I suspect elenchos is being uncharacteristically grumpy because I believe (and correct me if I'm misremembering this, e) that he (like I) rides a motorcycle. And thus gets tired of *constantly* avoiding car crashes with people who just plain old don't see us, despite the fact that we obey all the same driving laws that they do (unlike many bicyclists.) It just... gets... old.

No, seriously. Seriously this time: motorcyclists have a terrible time seeing other motorcyclists. You don't see them hit each other as much, but there aren't that many of them. It's because they are concentrating at looking for threats. Same as the car drivers.

And same as the bicyclists. That's why they hit pedestrians so much, and often each other. Everyone is most sensitive to the thing that will hurt them, cars and trucks, and they are never going to overcome that in order to also see a lot of non-threats.

That is human nature and 100,000 pubic service announcements won't change that.

I agree that even I don't always see other bikes, and I actively seek them out because I want that little bit of personal validation that comes from giving and getting the "down low, sideways v" hand signal. 'Cause I'm shallow.

Should it bother me that many of the H-D riders won't give me the signal because I'm not riding an American bike? Nope. Does it? Oh yes.