Comment

Comment by Barbara lee on February 22, 2013 at 6:03am

Amazing. This is so good to know about. Great incite here in sharing this with us.

So image when your tired and have been driving for a while staring at the horizon for a bit, that dot coming over the hill in the opposite direction way off in the distance may just disappear from time to time, interesting and will test this out further.

cheerio

Barb

So if I stare at phill long enough he might disappear. Hm intresting.

cheerio

Barb

Comment by Geoff Hutchesson on February 10, 2013 at 12:10am

Hi Lane,

I don't have any objection to copying of this material.

It was emailed to me, without any proviso and I posted it here to make people aware of this foible of human eyesight.

Having had a near miss at an intersection a while back, with a vehicle that I didn't see, added impetus to post it.

Comment by Graham Clune on February 9, 2013 at 11:50am

OOps....Correction..Situational Awareness :-)) 

Comment by Graham Clune on February 9, 2013 at 11:49am

Situation Awareness

One of the most stunning experiences I had whilst learming to fly was the excercise in "limited IFR" lessons whereby they take you out to the training area and put you "under the hood" which is like a welding shield without the window and it allows you to only see the instrument panels as such.

For about one hour they put you thru a whole series of climbs/descents/straight n level and various headings etc. etc. and finally tell you to "lift the hood" only to find yourself at about 500 ft. on finals with the runway coming up to you. Great stuff!!!

Comment by Geoff Hutchesson on February 9, 2013 at 11:16am

Yes Stephen,

As an electronic technician and having to focus on close work, I am also aware of this fact.

But it was worth posting in this form, as it may save somebody distress or injury. The diagram gave a practical demonstration of the blind spot.

Interacting with the display, you may have found that if you displaced the centre of your field of vision away from the centre green dot, the yellow dots remained. (eg. read the text below the diagram)

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The blind spot in human eyesight is caused by the entry point of nerves from around the retina into the nerve channel of your eye. The eye is also the most sensitive to colour and light around this area. (not a very technical explanation, but.)

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Something I practice as I drive, is to constantly change my focal point - focus on distant items, then focus on my speedo - odometer, while maintaining my attention on the task of driving.

Comment by Stephen Cox on February 8, 2013 at 10:50pm

Geoff that is something I have practised for decades,I in the past prepared MotoCross Bikes for Stephen Gall among others but Stephen Gall was probably the first Sporrtsman in Australia to be the comsumate professional at every level and he even visited many specialists such as eyesight specialists to help improve his racing,That method as outlined above does exactly that with an added bonus of prolonging good eyesight as few realise that the Muscles of the eye that control your ability to focus can become atrophied to an extent especially for office workers or Technicians who focus more often than not at fixed distances,This leads to the muscles not being used to theri full range often enough eventually leading to nfocus being restricted to a narrower range then requiring glasses for correction.

Constant change of focus  as a regualar part of living life aids considerably extending the time of supoerior vision as the muscles used for focusing do not become  stronger in one range of focus but retain a wider focus ability.

Eventually as the lens thickens throughout life we all tend to lose light gathering ability and need help to see things more clearly,Many for instance can read a paper without glasses under good sunlight but require glasses indoors without realising it is a requirement for extra light when we age that causes this phenomena.