Research by psychologists at the University of Nottingham’s School of Psychology indicates that a failure of short-term memory may be the cause of some crashes that occur when a driver violates a motorcyclist’s right of way.

In a series of experiments using a high-fidelity driving simulator, drivers looked at, but seconds later failed to recall, approaching vehicles as frequently as 15 percent of the time. Drivers were about five times as likely to forget a motorcycle than an approaching car.

The study suggests that many “Look but Fail to See” crashes may have been misclassified and are more likely to be a case of “Saw but Forgot” errors.

The ‘Saw But Forgot’ error: A role for short-term memory failures in understanding junction crashes? has been published in the online journal PLOS ONE— a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal published by the Public Library of Science—and offers interventions that may prevent such crashes in the future. The report is available at https://tinyurl.com/yymfaogt.