POLOKWANE – With this in mind, the Road Accident Fund in conjunction with Dynamic Road Safety hosted a course on defensive riding in Polokwane on Saturday 20 October. During the course several aspects of defensive riding were discussed and demonstrated.
One of these tips was collision avoidance. Well known motorcycle racer Jade Whitehouse explained that a person can avoid an obstacle by simply learning to focus on the path around the obstacle you are trying to avoid. “When you fixate on an obstacle such as a pothole, for instance, nine out of ten times you will drive into it. The reason being that where your eyes focus your body follows. In order for you as a driver to make sure you miss the obstacle you need to force yourself to focus on the direction you need to go in order to avoid the object. This way, your body will follow suit and you will prevent a possible collision,” he explains.
This train of thought was illustrated by placing a tyre on the roadway in front of the riders. Each driver was told to focus on the tyre then close their eyes and walk towards the tyre.
All the riders walked directly towards and even climbed over the tyre. When Jade instructed them to focus on a spot on the road surface next to the object, close their eyes and walk past the object. Most drivers easily avoided the object in question by following this advice.
“Moving your eyes to look away from an obstacle triggers a subconscious reflex which causes your whole body to adjust. One of the biggest mistakes drivers make is focusing on the problem they face. They will then collide with an object because they are looking directly at it instead of concentrating on the path they should be taking to avoid it. Focus on the solution, not on the problem,” Whitehouse concluded.
