Time Dilation
This happened about 4-5 years ago when out walking the dogs in the Thames Valley area of the UK near Reading.
Hi Richard,
Stumbled across this post and thread whist killing some time, and had to comment. I too have had the exact same thing happen to me a number of years back;
My own case was that I was driving home late one Friday night from my parent's house, which at the time was a very regular thing, and I had grown used to cruising along the A12 at around 70 mph with no real interruptions as the traffic was very light.
The night my experience happened was one night out of the ordinary when I rounded a bend at 70mph (as usual) and suddenly found myself confronted with stationary traffic just ahead of me.
In that instant my mind ("consciousness" / brain / what have you etc) realised that I was travelling way too fast to stop, everything seemed to "freeze" and time stood still, for want of a better phrase.
I found myself going over each option as I saw it, such as "
OK, so you certainly can't brake in time to avoid hitting the traffic... what about going over to the left and up the grass verge? Hmmm... how about aiming for the space between that car on the right and the crash barrier? If you do that, then at least the car won't take a full-on hit from behind and you'll likely ride up the crash barrier..." and so on... even to the extent of me thinking
"in the two lanes of traffic, What type of cars are there? Can I see the number of occupants in each? Which one would be 'best' to aim for?"
It felt like I had all the time in the world to make a decision and I vividly remember "sitting there" going through all sorts of scenarios, over what felt like at least 5 minutes of "normal" time... there was no perceptible noises or anything I remember within my "frozen time", and perhaps mulling over is a better description, as I felt like I was even able to wait for thoughts or things I'd missed to come up, if that makes sense.
Eventually, I decided that the best course of action was to try and place the car so it struck the right-hand side of the car in the outside and the crash barrier, hoping to minimise any impact. I even had time to say to myself something like
"Yes, I'll do that, I think..."
Then as suddenly as the freeze had started, I "snapped" back and everything was "back" to normal time, with me braking hard and trying to steer the car to my chosen "target area".
What happened was that as I was skidding towards the car in front, the traffic began to move and I managed to stop pretty much where the car was, before it had moved on. Needless to say I pulled off at the next layby and had to take a moment to regain my composure.
My own take on this and following research I made, was that my mind / brain "stepped up a gear" when it was needed, and time didn't actually stand still for me; my mind was just working at such a rate it appeared like that. in that situation. That would tally with your own fall experience.
If you've ever seen the movie "The Matrix", there's a scene near the end where Neo is fighting Agent Smith and is just literally standing there, blocking him with one hand with total ease and is going "faster" than Agent Smith can ever hope to go.... I suppose in a metaphor that the human brain has no finite limit to how fast it can go, when compared to an electronic "written" program, if that makes sense.
Sorry for the rambling, and the no doubt too many "quote marks"... I can't help myself.
I did actually email Paul Sieveking about a possible FT article on time "standing still" effects and hypothesis, but didn't hear anything back (yet).
Regards
James