Short-term cognitive conspicuity training does not improve driver detection of motorcycles at road junctions: A reply to Crundall, Howard & Young (2017)

A common cause of road accidents is driver failure to perceive an approaching motorcycle. In a lab-based study, we investigated whether a simple naturalistic training intervention designed to increase the cognitive conspicuity of motorcycles could improve drivers’ recognition of approaching motorcycles. Experienced drivers completed a series of motorcycle search tasks (training condition) or passively viewed scenes from nature (control) prior to performing a vehicle recognition task from the perspective of a driver approaching a T-junction. Results confirm established findings that drivers perform poorly at recognising motorcycles compared to cars, especially at far distances. However, motorcycle search training had no effect on driver accuracy in recognising approaching vehicles. Training lead to increased response times for recognising approaching cars relative to motorcycles, which could suggest a more thorough consideration of the road scene following training. We conclude that using motorcycle search training to raise the cognitive conspicuity of motorcycles is not effective in increasing their detection from a single delivery of training. Focusing on increasing motorcyclist visibility may be a more effective way to improve driver responses to motorcycles at junctions.