Our eyes are very simple devices and only have two modes that they use. They are open and taking in all the information in their field of vision or they are closed and not taking in any information at all.

Who ever made us gave our eyes three priorities to search for and track - all of them are related to our survival. Our eyes are designed to look for;

1. Danger

2. Food (hunting)

3. A partner (for procreation)

When we are out riding then our eyes have a horrible habit of looking for danger far too effectively. When they see something they don’t like our brain goes into overdrive and give us the sensation of tunnel vision - better described as target fixation because our vision does not actually tunnel.

What happens is that our attention and our concentration focuses solely on the ‘danger’ the eyes have seen. This then takes away our ability to have any spare attention to keep a track of our peripheral vision and we end up heading towards the danger as we cannot ‘see’ anywhere else to go. This is why, when we see something that we think is a danger we end up riding towards it (car, manhole cover, dog etc).

It is the worst of all the Survival reactions that Keith Code lists in his Twist of the Wrist series of books and can be seen to be the cause of many an avoidable accident.

Luckily this is a mental problem rather than a problem with our eyes. As we have already stated, the eyes are either open, taking all the information or closed taking in nothing at all. It is the brain that filters the inflowing information. This makes dealing with target fixation a little easier, but only a little. If we can recognise that we are spending all our attention on one thing then we can do something about it but that recognition is the key to it.

There are ways we can practise this to a degree, without even riding your bike. You can train yourself to use your peripheral vision more effectively and then you will be able to ‘see’ when it starts to be ‘lost’ more quickly.

Ok, so when reading these words, how much of the room you are in are you aware of? Now, whilst still reading these words see what you can recognise in your peripheral vision. The window? The door? The TV? The desk? It’s all there; you just have to spend a little attention to gain a lot.