radarblindness

Radarblindness is a term used in human factors and applied psychology to describe a failure to notice or correctly interpret information on radar displays, despite the presence of salient signals. It is not a medical diagnosis; rather it denotes perceptual and attentional limitations that can affect operators in aviation, maritime, meteorology, and surveillance. The concept is related to inattentional blindness and change blindness, where attention is diverted or changes go unperceived.

Causes include high cognitive workload, rapid or complex traffic, display clutter, poor symbol design, and fatigue. Under these conditions operators may miss a radar contact, misjudge distance or speed, or overlook secondary radar information such as altitude or track history. Cognitive biases, expectancy management, and priors about typical traffic can bias interpretation and reduce sensitivity to anomalies.

Contexts and consequences include aviation, maritime, and border or sector surveillance, where missed detections can contribute to near-misses or misidentified targets. Weather radar users may overlook severe storm signatures when attention is focused on routine activity. The phenomenon highlights how perception on complex displays can be constrained by human limits rather than by a lack of signal.

Mitigation strategies emphasize human-centered design and training: structured scanning procedures, standardized symbol encoding, improved display contrast, alerting and redundancy with other sensors, and automated detection aids or decision-support that flag unusual tracks. Research in this area is found in human factors and human-computer interaction literature, where the focus is on reducing perceptual lapses through interface design and appropriate levels of automation.