For this reason, in the case of the motormen I abstracted from the
study of single elementary functions and turned my attention to that
mental process which after some careful observations seemed to me the
really central one for the problem of accidents. I found this to be a
particular complicated act of attention by which the manifoldness of
objects, the pedestrians, the carriages, and the automobiles, are
continuously observed with reference to their rapidity and direction
in the quickly changing panorama of the street. Moving figures come
from the right and from the left toward and across the track, and are
embedded in a stream of men and vehicles which moves parallel to the
track. In the face of such manifoldness there are men whose impulses
are almost inhibited and who instinctively desire to wait for the
movement of the nearest objects; they would evidently be unfit for the
service, as they would drive the electric car far too slowly. There
are others who, even with the car at high speed, can adjust themselves
for a time to the complex moving situation, but whose attention soon
lapses, and while they are fixating a rather distant carriage, may
overlook a pedestrian who carelessly crosses the track immediately in
front of their car. In short, we have a great variety of mental types
of this characteristic unified activity, which may be understood as a
particular combination of attention and imagination.
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