Today me and my friend were coming on motor bike and I was sitting opposite direction because I was holding something in my hand (and it was fun :P). When he started bike I felt very high acceleration. I asked him to go slow however he said he is going with regular speed. Then out of curiosity, me and him tried different velocities and different accelerations while me sitting on either direction of acceleration and opposite to it. To my surprise I 'perceived' more acceleration when I was sitting opposite to direction of acceleration. While searching how we perceive acceleration, surprisingly it is not very well known. I found following explanations,
- We overestimate arrival time ( ref: this )
- Endolymph from Vestibular system ( ref: Wiki ) [Not exactly acceleration but rather balance]
- Interpolated motion segments ( ref: this )
My question, Is it just visual perception or special mechanism for detection of acceleration? In any of these cases, why I was feeling more acceleration while siting opposite than in direction of acceleration? [ My initial guess is because I didn't have any support and visual cues were messed up ]
Update:
I found this post but I didn't get any satisfactory answer from book referred in answer.