Safe Driving with Driverthink

Some might suggest that the human body was never designed to shuffle along at seventy miles per hour, one to two feet off the ground.  But we can get used to it – very quickly.  It’s not always a good thing.

As drivers, we can become Velocitized.  We get very used to a certain velocity – or speed.  Our body and mental state become very comfortable at the speed we’ve been cruising at.  We can tend to carry this “comfort” thing on into different speed zones or roads.  Basically, we’re speeding, but we tend not to be aware of it.  Because we’ve been driving at the speed for so long, we’ve become accustomed to it, and our body is telling us, “It’s okay”.

We’ve become Velocitized.

So we’ve been clipping along the Interstate doing lets say, seventy to eighty in their sixty five zone, for several hours.  We’re comfy there at five to fifteen plus the limit and the Highway Units seem to be leaving us alone (as long as we’re driving safely.)  Suddenly the limit drops to fifty five.

Now five to fifteen over the limit isn’t usually going to get us into much trouble – in fact we’re still being passed by others, but suddenly we’re fifteen to twenty five over.  That’s likely to be a teensy bit more than the highway units are happy with, even if we are dead center in the lane, aren’t tailgating and are doing all kinds of safe driving, totally under control, type stuff.

Perhaps we’ve exited off of the highway and are now motoring down a local road.  Our body still wants to move at the speed it has become comfortable with so we continue to boogey along as if nothing at all has changed.  We simply don’t realize we’re driving as fast as we are.

Might want to keep the Radar Detector on “high alert” though.  Smokey knows all about being Velocitized and he's likely waiting somewhere to nail those buzz bombs coming in off the highway.

The reverse can also be true.  If we’ve been poking along on side roads at forty to fifty and now we’re pulling out on to the Autobahn, our bodies and brains may require a brief “settle in” period as we get more comfortable with the higher speeds.

So how do we handle this “Velocitized” thing?  How do we deal with the fact that our body is deceiving us and making us think we’re going slower (or faster) than we actually are?

The first and most important thing we need to do is understand that the problem exists.

We need to recognize that if we have been traveling at speed for awhile, our body has become used to it.  Our driving brain isn’t going to automatically alert us to the fact that we’ve moved into different speed conditions.  It is going to deceive us, if we let it, and it’s going to try to maintain the former momentum.

The next thing we have to do is “consciously” adjust to the slower conditions.  I have a big red “V” that automatically goes off in my brain when exiting a highway.  It tells me, “cool it buddy, you’re Velocitized.  Time to adjust to your changing environment.”  Yup.  It has to be a focused, “think about it” kind of thing.

There are other signals that can alert us to our Velocitized state of being.

• We’re blowing by every one else on the highway.  Do we mean to be?  Did the limit change?

• We’re on the local road and have to “lock wheels” to stop at the Stop Sign which seemed to come out of nowhere.

• We’re feeling way to comfy doing seventy with only three or four car lengths between us and the car in front of us.

• We’re over steering or under steering in places where we shouldn’t be going fast enough for it to matter.

• We think we’re doing fifty but a quick glance at the speedo suggests — slightly more.

• Bugs are still splattering on the windshield instead of politely bouncing off.

• We’re alerted to the presence of bright flashing overhead lights in our rear view mirror.

Any time we change our road conditions, especially when moving on or off of a high speed road, we should pause for just a moment to “settle in” to the different conditions.  It doesn’t have to be a long, drawn out analysis of the new environment.  Rather, the “settle in” period is simply a conscious moment or two, for us to review and adjust to the new scenario.

Otherwise, the owner of those bright flashing lights might just walk over to our now stopped vehicle and offer these kind words.  “Gocha’ Buddy!  You were Velocitized!”  She gets lots of customers.