Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave R
I am still trying to figure out why people think kayaks are difficult to see in daylight. I think they are incredibly easy to spot.
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They
are easy to spot, but it depends on your speed.
The human female retina is amply and evenly filled for color detection. Women have the ability to detect colors better. This is likely an evolutionary adaptation from earliest human's seeking berries and other food gathering needs.
Men have fewer of those color-detecting "cones" in their vision and those are all located in the center of their retinas.
Overall, the male retina is biased towards black-and-white detectors—called "rods"—which are particularly dense in mens' vision outside of center. "Rods" are smaller, and can be packed more tightly and in larger numbers onto the retina.
This is of special impact to those who crave extreme speeds for the following reasons:
1) Peripheral vision is enhanced for movement with only black-and-white vision. (An evolutionary benefit for the stalking hunter-male).
2) Once a kayak gets out of dead-center of the male's vision at high speed, it doesn't matter what color the kayak is.
3) At high speeds, peripheral vision becomes blurry or, at advanced high speeds, lost altogether. The retina-center that detects color becomes much smaller for the operator. The effect is called tunnel-vision, or funnel-vision. The effect is like peering through a long pipe with a very shiny interior. At very high illegal speeds on the highway, a driver will overlook the patrolman sitting in the median!
In the extreme, such as the centrifuge mentioned previously, one's vision can
go black even while the participant is fully conscious. Perhaps Bear Islander has been made aware of this.
Women would see kayaks best; unfortunately, most boaters with the excessive speed imbalance are compensating men.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by ITD
"...Dave, it's COMMON SENSE...
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Kayaks
can disappear with excessive speed: it's science, not common sense.