Vision and Driving

Vision is actually a learned skill, it is not something we are born knowing how to do.  We learn to view the objects around us, and predict their interaction with ourselves and other objects.

What is the most complex task you do every day?  You probably do this every day but it requires the integration of many skills.  Driving, is probably the most difficult skill you do every day.  For a moment, think about how many different skills are involved and occurring simultaneously.

Basic driving skills:

• Control the car

  • Steer with your hands

  • Control speed with your feet

• Scan the road

  • Predict where the car next to you will be in the future

  • Look for pedestrians on the side of the road

  • Find street signs

• Listen

  • For people in your blind spot

  • For an ambulance down the road

• Timing

  • Determine if you have time to make it through the yellow light

  • How long will it take that car ahead of you to stop
     

And we do these all at the same time.  Take this fairly common driving experience.

“I will steer this car slightly to the left to avoid the pot hole ahead while cresting this hill.  I can see a red streetlight on the other side of the hill but I can’t see if there is a line of cars after the hill, better slow down.”

Obviously, this is not how we think when we drive. However, this description is a good example of how many things you are actually processing when driving.  Now consider how much more you have to integrate when you are merging at high speed in a shortened merge lane.  Is there room in the next lane, will the car ahead of you take it?  Will the car ahead of you slow down suddenly?

Once again we do these tasks every day, with very little thought given.  How do we achieve this integration?  We learn it.  When we first start to drive, most of us start in a parking lot but actually we have learned many of the skills elsewhere.  As children we walk, we run, we play and these teach us how to judge distances and time.  While young children we learn to determine if by walking faster we can slip around the person ahead without bumping them.  This is a very similar thought process to determining if we can speed up and pass someone on a road. Visually the information is nearly identical between the two situations.  But once again we are not born with this ability, it is a learned skill.   We have learned how to take visual information and with it travel through our world.

Take home point, vision is far more than 20/20.

“Dodge”