Never seen. A term coined by Frenchman Émile Boirac, along with déjà vu (already seen) and presque vu (almost seen, on the tip of the tongue). Jamais vu describes a familiar situation that we don’t recognize, like when I pulled a car out into an intersection and obstructed a cyclist’s right of way. Fortunately, he was far enough away and I was going slow enough, and traffic was light enough that he simply had to check behind him and then weave around me and be on his way. However, I got the sideways glance of contempt I know so well from giving it to drivers who pull in front of me and then jerk to a halt with surprise as I ride by.
But this wasn’t some inattentive driver who doesn't think about bikes, it was me! NO driver out there thinks about bikes more than I do. I wanted to pull up beside him and explain that really, I knew what I was doing. Heck, I don’t even own a car, I would tell him, it was either a rental or my daughter’s I was borrowing. I’d reassure him I'd been doing everything I could to be careful, only he seemed to materialize out of nowhere. Honest! I’m sure if I had chased him down to explain all this it would have reassured him that I am not a careless driver, or a lunatic.
I just didn't see him, and I really was looking. I’d stopped at the intersection well behind the line of parked cars on my left, then had inched out until I could see around them. Nothing. With that I pulled out a bit more and there he was, on top of me. And there I was, jerking to a halt with a look of surprise while he shook his head at me in passing. How could I have missed him what I was looking for so closely? If inattentiveness wasn’t the cause, something else must be.
Every time I’m forced to use a car for something, I’m reminded that compared to a bicycle, visibility in a car is terrible. A cyclist sits at approximately the same height at which they stand, and there is nothing obstructing their view of the road ahead. Sitting down, drivers in most cars are looking a couple feet below the level they stand and have to look around things like roof supports and mirrors and whatnot.* Almost all cars are made with their engines in front so a driver’s eyes don’t even get to the intersection until the car is already in it. Also, cars are noisy and by nature pretty insular; it’s common not to pay attention to much going on outside of a car’s interior and the road ahead.
* The seats of some trucks and SUVs are at least as high as one stands, but the size of those vehicles in an intersection introduces their own problems and the obstructions of the vehicle itself are still there. Plus, read on…
Even so, after inching into the intersection to look around the line of parked cars on the crossing street, it really felt like the rider came out of nowhere. How could I have missed that? I started to pay attention to how we see, and remembered reading some articles on what the eye is good a seeing and what it isn’t. The eye likes motion, it likes to see things moving across its field of vision, the way antelope might move past a hunter’s view on the savannah. In a crossing pattern, it’s easy to see what’s moving, and how fast. Things that approach directly are much harder to see. For objects moving right at you, the eye can’t figure out what it is or how fast it’s moving. It looks stationary and the only clue that it’s moving at all is that it gets a little bit bigger as it approaches.
That’s the only explanation I can come up with for what happened. The rider was coming right at me, not changing in size as he approached, riding right beside the line of stationary parked cars. From my perspective he wasn’t moving, he was just an object, and a distant one at that. Which means that when I drive, I have to investigate an object that seems not to be moving much more carefully before I decide it's not an approaching bicycle.
But it also points out how hard it is for any driver to look down a crossing street and determine that it’s clear for them to proceed. They simply don’t see any movement. I used to think that the problem was that drivers weren’t clued into how fast a cyclist can go, and therefore misjudged my speed. Now I think they may not realize that I’m moving at all, that no matter how apparent it is that to me that I’m moving, I look stationary to them. That’s why they always look so surprised when they pull out and I’m right on top of them.
It was a lesson in empathy and the limits of human perception.
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