How Autonomic is Your Driving?

This morning I was driving home from getting a haircut; it was a beautiful sunny spring day and there wasn’t much traffic. I had turned up the radio because a song was on with a good beat and I was also thinking about a conversation I had with the lady who cut my hair. I guess I wasn’t really concentrating on my driving when all of a sudden I noticed that I was slowing down for a light that was turning red. The thought occurred to me that I hadn’t really consciously decided to respond to the changing light, my brain had just registered that I couldn’t make it through and told my foot to move to the brake and slow down at exactly the right rate so that I would stop just before the crosswalk. All this self-awareness was happening about half way through the stopping process.

Now my whole attention was on the driving and what must have happened inside my head at the instant that the light changed. I honestly didn’t consciously remember thinking about whether to slow down or to try and make it through the light – somewhere in my brain the decision was made to opt for slowing down. The moment was both fascinating and a little scary. What if my brain had made the wrong decision? How fast are these things processed? Would my attention have been fully diverted to the driving task at hand if there was some hesitation?

Our attention is always divided between several things at once, with one in the forefront and several others in the background. For example, when you’re sitting at your computer concentrating on reading something, you’re also aware of the sounds coming from the TV behind you, and from the wind blowing the trees outside your window and of the discomfort in your back from sitting in your chair incorrectly. Even while you’re concentrating on the computer screen, your brain is also monitoring what is on the TV and when something funny is said, your attention is shifted to the TV and you glance over.

The same thing is happening when you’re sitting in the left turn lane waiting for your chance to go. You’re talking on your cellphone, hitting the turn signal, turning the steering wheel, adjusting it as you make your turn, and operating the gas and brake alternately, maybe even listening to the radio and thinking about adjusting the delay time on your windshield wipers – all in the time span of three seconds.

So, if your brain can easily handle all these things at the same time, why all the controversy over cellphones and navigation screens in cars? I honestly am not sure how I feel about the whole thing. On the one hand, I am in awe at the number of simultaneous things that the human brain is capable of doing. However, it is easy to see that a Nav computer that forces you to take your eyes off the road is a formula for disaster. Cellphones on the other hand should be no problem in a car as long as they are hands-free with voice dialing. Unfortunately, few people have that capability yet, so they also force you to take your eyes off the road to read the tiny screen.

Maybe the solution is to just hibernate cryogenically for about 30 years or so until hands-free / voice-activated / intuitive technology is perfected. Then everyone on the road will be totally comfortable with all this high-tech stuff and will allocate the proper amount of attention to their driving and there won’t be so many things competing for cerebral priority.

Of course, when I get cryogenically thawed I won’t know how to operate anything at all. Or, since the thawing out process is not quite perfected yet, maybe the better alternative is to just escape from urban life and lead a Thoreau existence for the remainder of my days, letting other people grapple with all these problems while I’m off contemplating the flight characteristics of butterflies.