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Strangeness In Vehicles: Things Experienced While Driving (IHTM)

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Anonymous

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Hello all. First thread, hope I don't mess up too badly.

I live in a secluded area, surrounded by nature and a heavily-wooded forest. My family and I often drive into town (around 15 miles away) because there's nothing to do at home but listen to the frogs croak. We don't have street lights, and at night, driving down the long stretches of two-lane road can get pretty creepy. Most nights, you can only see what's illuminated by your headlights and nothing else-- it's like driving into the unknown.

Anyways, one night it was particularly dark and spooky, and I was scaring myself by imagining things lurking about in the trees. I asked my brother (who was driving) if he'd ever seen things late at night out here. He surprised me by saying he had, things like people walking down the side of the road, cars that dissappeared, etc. He told me his girlfriend had also seen scary things while driving down.

Is this a common occurance? My brother told me the mind plays tricks on people when they drive down long stretches of road late at night and just chalked up his experiences to a bored mind, but I can't help but wonder if there's something more. Probably not, but I'd love to read some other accounts of "driving terrors."
 
well, I'm just making patterns, but it has been stated on these boards not so long ago that driving under trees can trigger epileptic fits... I recall reading a letter in FT where the correspondant told of a fit of temporal lobe epilepsy (i thnik) that occured when he was driving. This caused all sorts of hallucinations, and the feeling of a religious experience...

so that might explain something about weird things when driving under trees... :rolleyes: lol ok it's all my rubbish
 
The mind plays tricks. A few years ago I was driving to work along a small country lane in Shropshire. I had been driving the same route for years and still do to this day. But on this occasion my brain translated a house on the side of the road into a giant orang-utan. For a brief second that is what my sleepy eyes were seeing until my brain corrected it's mistake and translated the image back into the house.
 
The mind plays tricks. A few years ago I was driving to work along a small country lane in Shropshire. I had been driving the same route for years and still do to this day. But on this occasion my brain translated a house on the side of the road into a giant orang-utan. For a brief second that is what my sleepy eyes were seeing until my brain corrected it's mistake and translated the image back into the house.

Yup, been there, done that. As I've mentioned on here several times, when driving home late one night after work I once spotted a giant dog crouching at the T-junction ahead, ready to pounce on my battered Ford Escort. :eek:

I stared for the few seconds it took for the dog to turn into a car as I drove past.
 
Last Sunday we were driving through roadworks on the M1 and I wondered why there was a man with no vehicle standing at the side of the hard shoulder looking towards the traffic. It was only when we got directly next to him I realised it was an emergency phone booth wrapped in a tarpaulin.
When I said to my husband "I really thought that was a man standing there" he replied "wasn't it then?" o_O
 
I was driving down a country lane with a couple of friends at night - one of those single-track, hedge-bound roads, and as we turned a curve my usually-loquacious friend in the passenger seat turned quiet for a while. After a few minutes I asked her what was up and she said she didn't want to talk about it. We kept on at her and eventually she said she'd seen a tatty old man at the curve who was there one second and gone the next. There was no junction there, and the road went through fields with no houses around. I joked that my hazard perception must be off if I didn't spot him, and we laughed it off for her sake.

Fast forward a few days later, and the other friend in the car, who lives in the same area as that road, said that on the nearby highway he saw a bedraggled old man carrying a duvet down the middle of the carriageway :rofl: I quickly told my clairvoyant friend of this news :rofl:
 
Kind of related - sometimes when driving alone, and normally in a quiet or rural location, I get the feeling there is someone else in the car with me. Normally it feels like they are in the back seat, just over my left shoulder.

The first time I experienced this I was quite a new driver. I got the distinct feeling of a prescence in the car, and less than a minute later I had an accident, striking a hump back bridge. I wasn't hurt, but the car was rendered undriveable. I wouldn't say I was particularly distracted by the feeling of not being alone - this certainly wasn't the cause of the accident - so I wonder if it was someone trying to warn me of a hazard ahead.

I've had this feeling several times since then, and I always take it as a cue to be extra vigilant and slow down if necessary. That said, I had a more serious crash some years later, and don't recall feeling any prescence beforehand on that occasion.
 
sometimes when driving alone, and normally in a quiet or rural location, I get the feeling there is someone else in the car with me. Normally it feels like they are in the back seat, just over my left shoulder.

FT ran a substantial article a few years ago about the Ormskirk-Southport road as a hot-spot for these sensations.

This page suggests that approaching Southport from any direction may render you vulnerable to these elusive phantom hitchhikers!

Having done my fair share of solitary journeys in the region, I can't lay claim to any especially uncanny episodes, though the ground mists on Halsall Moss can be very atmospheric in winter. :)
 
This has happened to me twice, both times it was most unpleasant, the second time I was very spooked and I'm generally in the top three in "imperturbability contests". Crazy Dave told me to stop, get out, open the back door and tell whatever it was on the back seat to "F*ck Off". It worked for him, but since I got that advice it's not happened to me.
 
Kind of related - sometimes when driving alone, and normally in a quiet or rural location, I get the feeling there is someone else in the car with me. Normally it feels like they are in the back seat, just over my left shoulder.

The first time I experienced this I was quite a new driver. I got the distinct feeling of a prescence in the car, and less than a minute later I had an accident, striking a hump back bridge. I wasn't hurt, but the car was rendered undriveable. I wouldn't say I was particularly distracted by the feeling of not being alone - this certainly wasn't the cause of the accident - so I wonder if it was someone trying to warn me of a hazard ahead.

I've had this feeling several times since then, and I always take it as a cue to be extra vigilant and slow down if necessary. That said, I had a more serious crash some years later, and don't recall feeling any prescence beforehand on that occasion.

I have no sense of direction. I don't know why, but it has been a problem my entire life. Therefore, whenever I have to drive somewhere that is unfamiliar to me, I always bring a co-pilot.

I've been driving for a long time, I'm gonna go with decades, because I don't want to reveal my age. I have never had a accident or any kind of traffic violation, not even so much as a parking ticket.

On Feb. 28th 2017, my next door neighbor, who doesn't have a car, and was short on cash, asked if I would take him to his brothers place because he had about $80 worth of bottles and cans for recycling that he (my neighbor) wanted to cash in. About halfway there, we were sitting at a stoplight and when it turned green, right when I stepped on the gas, I had this flash in my mind, it was really fast, only lasted about two seconds of me seeing a car accident. I told my neighbor about it. Here's how the conversation went...

Me: That was weird.
Him: What?
Me: I just had a flash vision that I'm going to witness a car crash or maybe be involved in a car crash.
Him: That is weird.
Me: I know, right? I've never experienced a flash like that before.
Him: You're a really good driver so, if anything it must mean you're going to witness one.
Me: Well, I won't be happy about either scenario so, I vote that it was nothing.
Him: Yep, me too.

Then all was forgotten. We get there, he loads the bags in the car, then it's off to the bottle depot. I have no idea where it is so, he's giving me directions, turn left here, turn right here, blah, blah, blah...

We're sitting at a stop sign and the sun was positioned so that even the visor didn't help. The glare was covering the entire windshield. I looked in all directions, thought it was safe and proceeded forward. I smashed right into a SUV, to my right, that was the exact same color as the shade it was in. I struck that SUV in the perfect location to cause it to do a complete spin around. Like a police pit maneuver.

I took my foot off the gas and allowed the car to continue forward until we were out of the intersection and then parked. I couldn't believe how calm I felt. When I looked over to my neighbor, he was already halfway out of the car. He ran to the SUV and I could hear him asking if anyone was hurt. I have always known, in my heart & head that if I ever harmed anyone while driving, I would never be able to drive again. Hearing him ask that question was like a knife going straight threw me. The answer was no, no one was hurt.

I said to my neighbor, do you remember that flash I had? His mouth dropped open, eyes opened wide, his hands flew into the air and he did a complete spin around. Then he said, "Wholly shit! It's the exact same intersection!"

Having no sense of direction, I had no idea we were in the same spot. Even after he said that I still didn't recognize the place because we were traveling exactly where the SUV was hit when I had the flash so, it didn't look the same to me. :crazy:
 
Uhhhhh ... o_O

If it was the exact same intersection, how were you sitting at a stoplight the first time and a stop sign the next?

Was it one of those repeating flashers that signals red (stop) to one street and yellow to the other? I've seen those used in conjunction with stop signs on the red-alerted cross street.
 
Uhhhhh ... o_O

If it was the exact same intersection, how were you sitting at a stoplight the first time and a stop sign the next?

Was it one of those repeating flashers that signals red (stop) to one street and yellow to the other? I've seen those used in conjunction with stop signs on the red-alerted cross street.

No, it wasn't a repeating flasher. Think of it as a cross. One is a Avenue & the cross road was a street. The Avenue has a stop light on both sides & the street has a stop sign on both sides.

Edit: I should have said traffic light - not stop light. Sorry.
 
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OK - Thanks for the clarification ...
 
A couple of years ago, driving home late at night, I spotted a black cat sitting in the middle of the road. I slowed right down to give it a chance to scarper - not that I drive fast to start with, especially at night - and kept my eye on it, and it sat still.

When I reached it, it turned into an empty bin bag lying on the ground. OK, I thought, it's late and I'm tired, and sped up a little. A few seconds later there was a bend in the road, and round it, sitting in the middle of the read was, yes, an actual cat, this time mainly white. I slowed down again and the cat ambled off safely.

Couldn't help thinking, 'Did the white cat send the black 'cat' to slow me down?' o_O
 
OK - Thanks for the clarification ...

You are most welcome. :)

It is most likely my fault in the first place. I'm having tech difficulties for days now. It's hard to stay focused when you have to stop what you're doing, go back to desktop and restart the computer. And for some reason my browser keeps prompting me that it is not responding.

AAAAnd to top it all off, the "M" key just fell off my keyboard. :willy:
 
Thanks, little Bast.
A couple of years ago, driving home late at night, I spotted a black cat sitting in the middle of the road. I slowed right down to give it a chance to scarper - not that I drive fast to start with, especially at night - and kept my eye on it, and it sat still.

When I reached it, it turned into an empty bin bag lying on the ground. OK, I thought, it's late and I'm tired, and sped up a little. A few seconds later there was a bend in the road, and round it, sitting in the middle of the read was, yes, an actual cat, this time mainly white. I slowed down again and the cat ambled off safely.

Couldn't help thinking, 'Did the white cat send the black 'cat' to slow me down?' o_O
 
Sometimes I have seen things in the road that simply aren’t there. Normally this happens at night. A few times I have swerved to avoid a truck or something that quite suddenly appeared in front of me (more as a dark shadow than anything else). Quite scary because by swerving I could actually cause an accident rather than avoid one. There was of course nothing there and not even anything I could have mistaken for a vehicle.

On another occasion I was driving up the A1 (again at night) near Scotch Corner. I clearly saw a stationary small van beside me in the “fast lane” as I drove past. It seemed to be at a 45 degree angle, making it look like it had crashed into the central reservation. I looked in my mirrors just after I passed but couldn’t see anything. I decided to call the police to tell them (don’t think I pulled over - this was before the mobile phone laws came into force). Shortly afterwards they rang me back to say they had searched the road in the area and found nothing.

Don’t ask why I didn’t stop myself and check on any occupants of the vehicle - I really don’t know, except that the van had no lights on and looked abandoned, and because I couldn’t see anything in the rear mirrors I half doubted myself. This was probably another “hallucination” - but what causes these?
 
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Most of these optical illusions are probably caused by microsleep, a phenomenon familiar to anyone who’s worked shifts. l quoted here an embarrassing instance of it which happened to a colleague of mine.

Another fellow officer rolled a Panda car trying to avoid a “black dog” which ran across the road in front of him. Nothing supernatural, just a brain which had been awake too long.

maximus otter
 
Most of these optical illusions are probably caused by microsleep, a phenomenon familiar to anyone who’s worked shifts. l quoted here an embarrassing instance of it which happened to a colleague of mine.

Another fellow officer rolled a Panda car trying to avoid a “black dog” which ran across the road in front of him. Nothing supernatural, just a brain which had been awake too long.

maximus otter
Yep I've mentioned before on a long journey home from Reading without breaks I saw several pink elephants on the M6. Stupid thing to do.
 
Most of these optical illusions are probably caused by microsleep, a phenomenon familiar to anyone who’s worked shifts. l quoted here an embarrassing instance of it which happened to a colleague of mine.

Another fellow officer rolled a Panda car trying to avoid a “black dog” which ran across the road in front of him. Nothing supernatural, just a brain which had been awake too long.

maximus otter
Yes, I also suspect that the brain 'zones out' when performing a repetitive action like driving at night. Different if there's lots going on to keep it active, but night driving does tend to be boring.

I wonder if there were any such reports BEFORE cars? Driving a carriage or riding a horse tends to involve more concentration, but if you know the road well and the horse is just making its own way...? Did people have microsleeps during late carriage rides?
 
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