Have you ever driven a long distance… and then realized once you reached your destination that you can’t remember large portions of your journey?
This used to happen to me fairly frequently when I first met Lisa and was driving from Atlanta to Charlotte on a regular basis. I’d leave my place in Alpharetta, Georgia, and when I got to Lisa’s home just outside of Charlotte, I’d realize that I had no memory whatsoever of driving through South Carolina. I knew that I had obviously done it (I was in North Carolina, after all)… but I’d try to remember passing certain landmarks in South Carolina, and I’d draw a complete blank.
Come to find out, this phenomenon is called highway hypnosis and it’s a fairly common thing that also affects people that do repetitive tasks, like assembly line workers.
Apparently, the mind is able to divide itself in two: one part handles the task at hand – like driving, or assembling a widget – while the other concentrates on something else. Normally, the “conscious” part of your brain is in control when you’re doing a task; the “subconscious” part of your brain is supposed to stay quietly in the background. However, during a fit of “highway hypnosis”, the two parts become “equal” in your brain. The task may then shift to the subconscious part of the brain, while the conscious part thinks about other things.
Amazingly enough, there’s apparently no danger when your mind is in this state. Someone in a state of highway hypnosis is able to respond to external events (like swerving to miss a pothole or errant driver cutting you off) almost as quickly as someone not in a state of hypnosis.
Man, this has happened to me more times than I can count. I used to make a lot of 90-120 minute drives when I lived up in the sticks of Rowan County and this was extremely common. I even called it being “road hypnotized”.
I thought it was a little scary, personally. I think one of the things that brings this about is the lines on the highway going by at such a constant pace.