I’ve done this many times. I’ve also been on the way to someplace I’ve gone 40 bajillion times and at one point gotten confused on which way to go - do I turn right at this stop sign, or go straight? The brain is a weird creature.
I’ll go one better (or worse, depending on your point of view): My summer / after-school job as a teenager was as a tour guide at some local caverns. Over the years I probably led thousands of tours, and sometimes I would zone out during a tour. It never happened for a full hour-long tour, but sometimes at various stops throughout the caverns I would suddenly realize I hadn’t been paying attention to what I was saying. I don’t THINK I ever went off-script, but I’m not 100% sure.
No, I honestly can’t think of a specific instance were I zoned out and missed a turn or went the wrong way. Not saying I’ve never done it, but I find the idea so abhorrent that I’d need to have an intensive self-intervention if I did. Driving a vehicle is serious business, something that you shouldn’t allow to fall into the subconscious part of the brain, because that’s how people get killed. The “automaticness” of the actions is not a feature, it’s a bug. Otherwise you wouldn’t be making the wrong turns or driving away without your groceries. It means you’re not well enough aware of what you’re doing or what’s going on around you. Even if it only takes a few seconds to snap out of the groove, those few seconds can be the difference between you running someone over or not.
So you’re saying when you’re behind the wheel, the entire time you’re thinking “I’m driving to the library.” or “I’m driving to Dairy Queen.” You don’t talk with anyone in the car, you don’t listen to the radio, you’re fully engaged with where you’re going and nothing else exists for you?
Yes! Including “I need to turn left up here because that’s the way to the library.”
Sure I talk with passengers and listen to the radio, but driving comes first. There’s room for not having to think too much because there’s nothing to process at the moment, but if you forget where you’re going then you’re not in the right mental state. I can confidently say I’ve never had to make a beeline for a highway exit because I was distracted or wasn’t paying attention and almost missed it, for example.
When I am in the city (I live in Chicago and traffic is usually pretty heavy) I am absolutely focused mainly on driving and almost never miss a turn (has happened on a few occasions but it is rare).
But, as I mentioned above, I have also experienced road hypnosis more than a few times when on long stretches of highway that need almost no thought to drive. Sounds scary but you actually drive safely when doing it. It is an odd thing.
Back when we were commuting to work, there was a light we’d go straight through on our commute. But if we were heading to the airport, or running up to Annapolis on some errands, we really had to remind ourselves to turn right at that light, because if we just got to talking, we’d go straight through it before we remembered.
That particular habit has faded since we were working from home from March 2020 until we retired, but there are still times when I find myself turning one way on autopilot when I meant to go the other way.
And I say to myself, “My God, what have I done?”
(Gotta roll with the thread’s theme music here!)
Actually, I’ve never done that, thank goodness. That would weird me out.
When we adopted the Firebug (he’s 17 now), I was absolutely paranoid about that.
Two things helped: first, they make little mirrors you can hang from your regular rearview mirror that you can aim at where your kid’s car seat is, so you see the kid nearly continuously as you’re driving, which makes it a lot harder to forget him/her.
And second, if one of us had ever lost track and driven right past his day care and taken him into work with us, we parked at work in a nice, cool parking garage, so his dying of hyperthermia would have been unlikely even in that worst-case scenario. That was a bit of good luck, and it eased the paranoia a great deal.
Engaging the turn signal is so automatic to me I quite often signal when turning out of my own driveway. Less commonly when I leave my driveway I turn right at the first light which is the way I almost always go except when I need to stop at the post office which is straight ahead.
Interesting. I thought of highway hypnosis as something quite different from what you (and Wikipedia) describe. What I think of has only happened to me 2-3 times in my life: driving on an interstate highway, quite late at night, when there are few to no cars on the road, and possibly none visible ahead.
It looks like the road goes on forever, into another dimension or something, and it’s VERY hard to keep the brain alert and focused on the road - seems like it would be too easy to get into “cooooooolllllllll…” mode as you go straight when the road takes a slight curve. The times I’m thinking of, I have NOT been drowsy at all (tired, yes. Sleepy, no).
Creepy AF. I have to make a point of making a lane change, frequently looking right and left, and talking to someone else in the car if I’m not solo.
This reminds me of one early driving-while-on-phone experience I had.
I was hands-free. Talking to my husband and kids. Driving on roads I knew thoroughly (I was in my home town) - roads I could have driven in my sleep (and I frequently quip that I probably had - though I don’t think that’s true).
And I sailed right on past my highway exit.
Luckily, I did not attempt to correct by doing anything dangerous - likely I had gone too far past the exit for that to be possible. IIRC, I said a bad word, then got off at the next exit and turned around.
It’s not really either of those things , though - you’re not missing a turn or going the wrong way exactly. You’re going the way you go every day - except today is Saturday and you aren’t going to work. Instead you’re going to that new store and for the first 10 minutes you’re supposed to drive the same route you take to work. But then you get to an intersection where you make a left to go to work and a right to go to the store and you go left instead of right. The driving itself is not subconscious - you won’t get into an accident or run over a pedestrian
I wonder if a person driving with road hypnosis is a better driver?
They clearly drive normally and fine and, if an emergency situation happens, they will just react without wondering about what will happen to their insurance rates or if their mom will kill them for wrecking the car or whatever. It’s just instinctual driving.
Thirty-some years ago, we were driving home at night - I had my pre-school daughter in my car and my husband was following in his. I don’t recall why we were in separate cars, but it doesn’t matter.
Daughter and I were singing “Wheels on the Bus” with wild and reckless abandon. Then I noticed the spousal unit signaling me to pull over on the unlighted country road. Apparently our enthusiastic songfest caused me to drive right past the entrance to our neighborhood. Oh, I’d have figured it out when I got to the light about a mile further on…
For lots of these “autopilot” events that end normally I’ve often asked myself afterwards whether:
I had been paying attention but just not recording / remembering the fact I was paying attention, so now I can’t recall what I never recorded even though it happened.
OR
I wasn’t paying attention and was driving mostly on subconscious habit / instinct, which never leaves a memory trace to be recalled later.
From the perspective of post-event introspection those two very different “befores” would seem identical.
I live in dense mostly-rectilinear suburbia. I’m a natural-born navigator. Most of my nav errors come from either rubber-necking at the ever-changing storefronts and whatnot, or driving tactically changing lanes or speeds to advance through traffic then finding myself past my last turn while I was in the let lane working to get around the white car to my right while I should instead have been in the right lane prepping to turn right. Oops.
These days I end up with errand lists of 5 or 6 stops to make, each a mile or two apart. Which I’ll sort into an efficient order in my phone’s “to do list” before leaving. Leaving one, it’s real easy to remember the next, but not accurately. So unless I check my phone, I’ll end going from 1 to 2 to 4 skipping past 3. Oops again.
I once drove up to the front of my kid’s school and started walking to the front door. Then I realized I was actually driving home from work and it was 3AM. That wasn’t so much “autopilot” or “highway hypnosis” as it was “falling into a deep sleep while driving.” Fun times.
This happens to me if I’m on the way to somewhere I regularly go and have to stop somewhere else that I usually don’t go. For example Walgreens is on the way to the grocery store. So when I have to pick up an Rx, I’ll think “Don’t forget to stop at Walgreens on the way to the store.” Then I’ll be at the store and think “crap, I forgot to stop at Walgreens. Oh well, don’t forget to stop on the way home.” Then I get home and remember…
