A short story about target fixation.

Syd · Post by **Syd** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 1:31 am

I rode into a ditch today.

It was a really nice morning, and since I hadn't had a chance in ages, I decided I'd ride up South Mountain Park in Phoenix; which is, if you like the twisties, the best road within 40 miles of downtown Phoenix. Like I said, it has been a long time since I rode up there, so I was riding fairly conservatively. (I had gone up to Dobbins Lookout and was headed to the Gila Lookout, and I was just past the first driveway to the towers, for you locals.)

I came to a stretch which is slightly uphill, and is a nice S curve; lots of fun once you're used to the road. I had nearly completed the first part of the S when I saw a bicyclist who was also completing his first part of the turn. Neither one of us crossed over the double yellow, and were never in danger of hitting the other. In fact, I was looking right, so just caught him in my peripheral vision, but it made me roll of the throttle a bit anyway.

This is where the target fixation comes in. Because I slowed down in the lean, I began to turn more sharply. Because I started to turn more sharply, I thought it prudent to see what was there. Then of course, when I saw how close I had gotten to the edge, I focused on it and especially on the washed out bit just to the right of the white line. So I drove into the ditch. A part of me knew that if I just looked to the left I would avoid the whole mess, but I didn't (that's why they call it fixation, you know?).

So I found myself in the bottom of a shallow, 18" - 24" deep ditch, full of the rock that makes up S Mountain - sandstone, granite and caliche, nature's concrete. The scoot started right up after I pulled it upright, and with a little wheel spinning I power walked it out of the ditch onto the road and rode the quarter mile or so to the lookout.

I ended up with a scrape on my wrist, less than I have gotten at work, and what will be a decent bruise on my right leg. Surprisingly, the scoot suffered even less - it has a handful of scratches through the color on the painted pieces under the foot area.

The moral of the story, kiddies, is this: The scoot goes where your eyes and especially your head looks, so look at the road, the ride is a lot smoother there.

phatch · Post by **phatch** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 3:27 am

Scary. It's always a wake up call to realize that we do indeed go where we look. South Mountain is a great ride!

Have you seen this kid totaling his (or daddy's) BMW M3 on that same road?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZVrnd9V7sk

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/MZVrnd9V7sk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

pumpedoncaffeine · Post by **pumpedoncaffeine** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 3:33 am

Glad you alright.

Syd · Post by **Syd** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 5:04 am

phatch wrote:Scary. It's always a wake up call to realize that we do indeed go where we look. South Mountain is a great ride!

Have you seen this kid totaling his (or daddy's) BMW M3 on that same road?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZVrnd9V7sk

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/MZVrnd9V7sk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I got further than he did, I got further than he did. (said like a little kid

)

az_slynch · Post by **az_slynch** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 6:35 am

Glad that you and the scooter came out of it relatively well.

South Mountain is a beautiful ride, but it is a bit deceptive. Compared to My. Lemmon down here, it's not as long or tall. It also doesn't seem to have many of the "scenic dropoffs" that remind us to keep eyes on the road. Plenty of places to stuff it if you lose focus, though.

JHScoot · Post by **JHScoot** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 7:04 am

look away my friends....look away

jrsjr · Post by **jrsjr** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 5:42 pm

Syd, glad you didn't get hurt.

Target fixation is extremely difficult to fight. About all you can do is practice being conscious of it and do your best to train yourself not to do it. It's almost impossible to completely eliminate it, though. Even pro riders get caught out by it sometimes. This example is from yesterday's MotoGP race.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/D2pi0cHmmXE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Syd · Post by **Syd** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 10:12 pm

jrsjr wrote:Syd, glad you didn't get hurt.

Target fixation is extremely difficult to fight. About all you can do is practice being conscious of it and do your best to train yourself not to do it. It's almost impossible to completely eliminate it, though. Even pro riders get caught out by it sometimes. This example is from yesterday's MotoGP race.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/D2pi0cHmmXE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I know. I'm not highly skilled, with just 20,000 miles or so ridden, but Im no noob either. All I would have had to do was to roll on the throttle or look left and I would have just had a little adrenaline rush. D'Oh?

And, my crash wasn't nearly as impressive as the one shown above. Phew!

jrsjr · Post by **jrsjr** » Tue Oct 02, 2012 3:23 am

Syd wrote:And, my crash wasn't nearly as impressive as the one shown above. Phew!

Just for the record, Hayden later stated he rode it out purposely to avoid tumbling into the wall. He was checked out by the docs at the field hospital and is okay. If it had been me, I would have target fixated on that onrushing wall, for certain.

scootERIK · Post by **scootERIK** » Tue Oct 02, 2012 4:28 am

jrsjr wrote:Syd, glad you didn't get hurt.

Target fixation is extremely difficult to fight. About all you can do is practice being conscious of it and do your best to train yourself not to do it. It's almost impossible to completely eliminate it, though. Even pro riders get caught out by it sometimes. This example is from yesterday's MotoGP race.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/D2pi0cHmmXE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

How is this target fixation? It's not like he could have turned, you can see him fighting to try and slow down but he did have traction.

Syd · Post by **Syd** » Tue Oct 02, 2012 6:10 am

scootERIK wrote:
jrsjr wrote:Syd, glad you didn't get hurt.

Target fixation is extremely difficult to fight. About all you can do is practice being conscious of it and do your best to train yourself not to do it. It's almost impossible to completely eliminate it, though. Even pro riders get caught out by it sometimes. This example is from yesterday's MotoGP race.
How is this target fixation? It's not like he could have turned, you can see him fighting to try and slow down but he did have traction.

My guess? A rider at that level could have gone low side and slid (more safely) into that wall, instead of staying upright and smashing headlong into it. But like I said, that's just a guess.

jartist · Post by **jartist** » Tue Oct 02, 2012 6:26 am

You'll slide farther and faster laying any bike down than staying on your rubber and using the brakes. Tires have better traction than your leathers.

Rusty J · Post by **Rusty J** » Tue Oct 02, 2012 8:01 am

And going over the wall meant hitting something relatively flat (either the wall itself or the ground on the other side) rather than sliding into sharp or pointy bits on the bike when it slid to a stop against the wall (handlebars, footpegs, frame, etc). With full gear on, distributed impact would do less damage than point-loaded impact or in the worst case, impalement.

Jartist nailed it -- your two tires' contact patches have far better traction than the steel and Tupperware that would be scraping on the ground instead. ALWAYS ride it out as long as you can.

KABarash · Post by **KABarash** » Tue Oct 02, 2012 2:06 pm

Holey moley......!!!!

My worst 'fixation' issue, was when I got a firefly splat right between my eyes on my helmet face shield!!
Was all I could see the rest of the ride home that night, 'green glow guts'

RoaringTodd · Post by **RoaringTodd** » Tue Oct 02, 2012 2:10 pm

Once a shapely lady was walking past me, and I fixated on that... and rear ended the car in front of me...

Skootz Kabootz · Post by **Skootz Kabootz** » Tue Oct 02, 2012 2:21 pm

Glad you're OK Syd. This is a nice injury free reminder that no matter how many miles we have behind us, no one is perfect 100% of the time and we can all benefit from constantly staying brushed up on our riding best practices. Thanks for posting. I'll be reminding myself of this while riding.

jrsjr · Post by **jrsjr** » Wed Oct 03, 2012 2:12 am

scootERIK wrote:How is this target fixation? It's not like he could have turned, you can see him fighting to try and slow down but he did have traction.

Sorry, I didn't mean to offend anybody. For the record, I am a fan of #69 and not at all a fan of that other guy who knocked him off his RC at Estoril in 2006.

pugbuddy · Post by **pugbuddy** » Wed Oct 03, 2012 2:16 am

RoaringTodd wrote:Once a shapely lady was walking past me, and I fixated on that... and rear ended the car in front of me...

I cannot state how often the first part of this has happened to me. Happened tonight in my car actually....

Rob · Post by **Rob** » Wed Oct 03, 2012 10:16 pm

pugbuddy wrote:
RoaringTodd wrote:Once a shapely lady was walking past me, and I fixated on that... and rear ended the car in front of me...
I cannot state how often the first part of this has happened to me. Happened tonight in my car actually....

Almost as bad as texting while driving? I'll step up and admit to the same problem??? Way, way back ... fresh with a one month old driver's license .. I did a little damage to my dad's car while checking out the scenery. His short term memory isn't the greatest anymore, but apparently that little incident is still vivid in his mind as he still brings it up from time to time.

Rob

skully93 · Post by **skully93** » Thu Oct 11, 2012 4:12 pm

eep!

Glad you weren't hurt. I've done the same by looking at a car coming around a curve, thinking "don't go near that car...". Nearly drove right into it.

Milt · Post by **Milt** » Fri Oct 12, 2012 12:54 am

Glad to hear you made it out intact. Your post reminded me of the many hours I spent there training on bicycles (I used to race) as well as some truly awesome sport motorcycle riding. South Mountain Park is the best place in central Arizona for crotch-rockets, with Tortilla Flats a fairly close second.

Here on the Northern Front Range (Colorado), we have quite a few good places to ride , but I still miss the park.

Post by **ericalm** » Fri Oct 12, 2012 7:50 am

Glad you're okay!

Oddly enough, after going down in a curve because I was riding too damn fast in a treacherous area, I got a bad case of target fixation—as in, I was having a lot of trouble looking through my turns, especially in the twisties. This was exacerbated by a later head-on collision. I can't really explain it, but I was having to fight something in my brain that wanted to see what was ahead, possibly for fear of hitting it. This, despite knowing that looking at it increased my odds of hitting it. Some weird psychological mojo there or something but it took me months to shake.

Anyways, many experienced riders I know who've gone down in a single-vehicle crash has done so while taking a turn the wrong way—too fast, somehow lost control, got fixated, and so on. It seems that when we get sloppy, we lose the very first skills we learned as riders.

stASH · Post by **stASH** » Fri Oct 19, 2012 4:09 pm

Speaking of target fixation, observe this series of 28 photos:

http://xtremesportsphotography.photoref ... po=0&pc=28

magnato1 · Post by **magnato1** » Fri Oct 19, 2012 4:20 pm

stASH wrote:Speaking of target fixation, observe this series of 28 photos:

http://xtremesportsphotography.photoref ... po=0&pc=28

THat is CRAZY, the change from photo 18 to photo 19 is unreal. Hope that guy was ok.

stASH · Post by **stASH** » Fri Oct 19, 2012 4:24 pm

Yeah, it's pretty brutal, but a fairly clear lesson on target fixation. This rider was never actually looking into the turn. First he's looking at the photographer, then he stares at the 'vette right to the point of impact. You can see that he initially got the bike to lean enough to make the turn, but instead of looking where he wanted to go, he watched the car. Lesson learned the very hard way.

heatherkay · Post by **heatherkay** » Fri Oct 19, 2012 7:07 pm

Corvette guy's insurance company must have loved that.