Zoning out while driving

[TheGoodTexan]

I guess most people do this, but it just freaked me out tonight. I left a late meeting and got in the car for the 20 minute ride home. No radio on. No phone calls. It felt great out side, so I cracked the sunroof open a bit and started the drive home.

The next thing I realize is that I'm coming to a stop at an intersection, 5 minutes from my house!

I don't remember anything about the drive. The entire time, I was thinking about things that were said in the meeting, and some additional responsibilities that were handed to me, and what I need to be doing tomorrow morning to get the ball rolling.

In that time:

- I passed through 4 traffic signals
- Passed at least a dozen speed limit changes
- Drove for 6 or 8 minutes on I-65 north
- Made right turns
- Made left turns across traffic
- Stopped at two stop signs

No one ever honked at me. No police pulled me over. I didn't hit anything. I'm not justifying me doing this... when I pulled in my driveway, I was actually scared - cause I didn't remember any of the drive home.

This is not a common occurrence for me, but it has happened before. But the other times were on an early morning drive, when there is little traffic on the road.

Just a little freaky that my eyes told my brain what to do... while my brain was multi-tasking.

[tap4154]

"Missing time".

You were abducted, dude.

;o)

[TheGoodTexan]

Originally Posted by tap4154

"Missing time".

You were abducted, dude.

;o)

But I'm not sore, in any of those places.

[Scott Bennett]

I catch myself doing this a few times a month on the drive home from work. It freaks me out!

[Breen]

I have that quite often, but I know I was in control the whole time.

We're a small city so getting from one end of the island to the other is about an hour. I can totally not remember 40mins worth of it. Especially if the commute is usual, smooth, uneventful.

Just yesterday I ran the lights at the main junction at my house. I freaked out when I realized, halfway through the junction. Thank God no cars coming the other way!

It was a case of zoned out, some slow RnB bedroom song on radio, habit of 'knowing' my street's traffic light timings etc. But inexcusable.

[boris bubbanov]

I wish I could do that, sometimes.

I see every stupid thing the people around me are doing. I see the kid texting, and change lanes to get away; I see the Dodge van with the bad left rear tire, etc. The "deep thought" about how to solve some pressing problems that have nothing to do with driving - I can't focus on them, it seems, because the details of the driving are "distracting" giving those issues my full attention.

Except.

That sometimes I realize once I've driven 400 uneventful miles or so, I actually have formulated a plan for how to do thus and such project, unrelated to driving.

So, I'm backwards from you. The driving is front and center and I can relate all the details, but I've been "working" with another part of my brain the whole time it seems (even though it "felt like" I could not).

[Briezy]

It is actually a form of hypnosis. Your sub conscience was able to drive for you while you took a vacation. It happens to me all the time. Scary part is coming to think I missed my turn.

[elicross]

Originally Posted by tap4154

"Missing time".

You were abducted, dude.

;o)

Yep. X-Files theme is playing softly in the background of Texan's day.

I've never zoned out that much during a drive, but there have been moments when I've found myself half a block past a traffic light and thought "Was that light green?"

But there were no honking horns, no screeching brakes -- once there was even a cop car visible in my rear view, and he didn't proceed to pull me over -- so I knew the light must've been green. But I had no memory at all of actually looking at the light and seeing it was green. I figured crossing that intersection had become such a routine part of my day that I looked, saw it was green, and proceeded on without taking any further notice of it. I feel sure my mind registered the light's color on a level necessary to confirm it was okay to proceed...it just didn't register any higher than that.

It's still kinda scary, though. It makes me think that, if you can have a thought like "Was that light green?" and not be sure of the answer just because you've got a lot on your mind, then nobody has any business messing with a cell phone or putting on makeup or shaving for work while driving. Maybe you can't control the times when your mind zones out on little things (although, if it happens a lot, you might consider whether something more serious is going on) -- but you can sure as hell control whether you're yakking or texting on the phone while driving.

[Briezy]

Another cool thing about the subconscious is if you ever caught yourself singing to yourself and you don't realize that you are, that is another personality trying to entertain you.

[Brad Pittiful]

ive done that...you were prolly on auto pilot...if something was going to happen you would snapped out of it

[TheGoodTexan]

Originally Posted by Briezy

It is actually a form of hypnosis.

This makes sense to me on some level, except that I was indeed solving work related issue in my brain. When I snapped out of it, my thoughts were as real as if I had still been sitting in that meeting for the past 15 mins or so.

[elicross]

Maybe it's like when you glance at your watch to see if it's time to head for work (or some other appointment), and just a few seconds later you realize 1) you know it's not time to go yet, and 2) beyond that, you have no clue exactly what time it is.

(Or does that happen to anyone but me?)

It's like some smaller part of your brain kicks in just enough to answer the vital question -- "Is it time to go yet?" -- while not bothering the rest of the brain with details like the exact time. If you could ask that smaller part of your brain "I just looked at my watch -- why don't I know what time it is?", it would probably answer "You didn't ask what time it is; you asked if it was time to go."

[Chud]

Originally Posted by Briezy

Another cool thing about the subconscious is if you ever caught yourself singing to yourself and you don't realize that you are, that is another personality trying to entertain you.

Someone needs to put down the Freud and Breuer...

Automatization of processes, and divided attention. Nothing more. Your working or "scratch pad" memory was tied up with whatever thoughts you were zoning out on, so the experience of the drive was not encoded as an important memory to make it to short term. Seven plus or minus two brother, that's basically what we can store before something has to be rehearsed or otherwise elaborated on so that we remember it later.

[cband7]

It's happened a few times but always on well driven routes that posed few challenges or decision requirements. Most often when I was in Nevada and drove to work on a long straight highway through the desert.




.

[ne4tt]

The horse always knows the way home.



jaime

[garytelecastor]

Something special for you GoodT.

[trev333]

Originally Posted by ne4tt

The horse always knows the way home.



jaime

amen to that...... my old truck knows these dirt roads around here better than me... and has arrived home miraculously many a time after local parties......

who needs to remember the drive?.. if you've done it on auto pilot so many times....

my old man told me a story about a local bullock wagon driver in his valley when he was a kid...
He's load up a log in the morning.. take it 20 miles into town... leave the wagon for it to be unloaded in the rail yard... go over to the pub and drink heavily... at closing time they'd take him to his bullock wagon..lay him on the back.. drape ropes and chains on him so he didn't fall off.. point the bullocks up the road.. and set them off to walk all the way home.... which they always did...

I guess the old lady would load him off at home or the ride home would sober him up...... to do it all again the next day...

[Mike Bruce]

25 years ago I commuted 1 hour each way to an evening shift, driving through several small towns, and through miles of farm land. Many nights I never saw most of those towns. My truck didn't have cruise, had a manual transmission, and a very bumpy ride. Lots of things to make me pay attention but still I often "woke up" when I got to my destination. Never got pulled over, never got in a dispute with another driver, in 2 years of this daily drive. Hasn't happened since. Maybe I knew the road too well.

[AndyLowry]

My office is 60 miles from home, and I drive through a National Forest to get there. Happens all the time. I don't think it's dangerous, as I am able to stop for the ubiquitous deer and javelina when necessary. It's not really distracted driving, just unremembered driving due to the lack of anything new.

I always know where I am by the progress of my daily podcasts. If Tech News Today is ending, then I've got 25 more minutes to go.

[Red Square]

It is actually a form of hypnosis. Your sub conscience was able to drive for you while you took a vacation

Breizy is absolutely correct. You are completely reactive, yet on a certain mental level oblivious to what is right in front of you. If you've ever wondered what it is like to be hypnotized, the simplest thing to relate it to is the "missing time" when driving.