Expect the unexpected
We often see or don’t see what we expect to see. The result can be damaging.
For example, if we come to an intersection every day and have never seen a pedestrian crossing there,
we begin to form an unconscious expectation of what we will find there tomorrow, and the day
after that and the day after that. What’s happening here is that as drivers we inhibit or
suppress attention to areas in our visual field where we’re not expecting to see something appear. In this case, it’s a pedestrian crossing at a particular intersection.
