Department of Psychosocial Science, University of Bergen, Postboks 7807, 5020, Bergen, Norway.
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Cogn Res Princ Implic. 2021 Mar 24;6(1):22. doi: 10.1186/s41235-021-00287-0.
The purpose of the present note is to draw attention to the potential role of a recently discovered visual illusion in creating traffic accidents. The illusion consists in a compelling and immediate experience that the space behind an occluding object in the foreground is empty. Although the illusion refers to a region of space, which is invisible due to occlusion (a blind spot), there is evidence to suggest that it is nevertheless driven by visual mechanisms and that it can be just as deceptive and powerful as ordinary visual illusions. We suggest that this novel illusion can make situations involving blind spots in a road user's field of view even more dangerous than one would expect based on the lack of visibility by itself. This could be because it erroneously makes the road user feel that (s)he has actually seen everything there is to see, and thus has verified that the blind spot is empty. This hypothesis requires further testing before definitive conclusions can be drawn, but we wish to make researchers and authorities involved in the analysis of traffic accidents and on-the-spot crash investigations aware of its potential role in order to encourage registration of relevant data and facilitate further research.
本备忘录旨在提请人们注意最近发现的一种视觉错觉在造成交通事故方面的潜在作用。这种错觉在于一种强烈而直接的体验，即前景中遮挡物体后面的空间是空旷的。尽管这种错觉指的是由于遮挡（盲点）而看不见的空间区域，但有证据表明，它是由视觉机制驱动的，它可以像普通的视觉错觉一样具有欺骗性和强大的效果。我们认为，这种新颖的错觉可能会使道路使用者视野中的盲点情况比仅凭不可见性本身所预期的更为危险。这可能是因为它错误地让道路使用者感到（他/她）实际上已经看到了所有需要看到的东西，从而已经验证了盲点是空旷的。在得出明确结论之前，还需要进一步测试这一假设，但我们希望提醒参与交通事故分析和现场事故调查的研究人员和当局注意其潜在作用，以鼓励记录相关数据并促进进一步的研究。
