![]() ![]() When planning a driving trip, make sure you allow enough time for a stop every hour or two. When this happens on the road, you put yourself and any nearby drivers at risk. If you zone out over some documents at work, the worst that will happen is you’ll just have to read them again. The longer you spend on a monotonous task, the more likely your brain will switch to autopilot mode. If you start to notice the warning signs of highway hypnosis, try these tips to increase your alertness. Longer time spent driving can increase your chances of experiencing highway hypnosis and even make it more likely you will fall asleep. Other factors, including road monotony, the blurring white lines, and trees stretching endlessly toward the horizon, can combine with drowsiness to lull you into a trance-like state, even if you don’t actually fall asleep.įatigue can also get worse if you keep driving. In either case, your brain processes what you see more slowly than usual, relying on mental predictability and autopilot instead. The monotony of the road can lower brain alertness, but so can fatigue. The likelihood of experiencing highway hypnosis does go up when you’re tired. In other words, your brain switches to a less-alert mode and begins to pay less attention to visual stimuli. Instead, your brain begins to depend more on your mental prediction of what you’ll see (extra-retinal feedback). When you drive along a road you know well or stare at a largely unchanging road for a long period of time, your brain begins to depend less on retinal feedback, or what you actually see. Brain inattentionĪccording to other research from 2004, your oculomotor system, or the system that controls eye movements, also plays a part in highway hypnosis. This suggests highway hypnosis may happen very quickly on monotonous stretches of road, not only after long periods of driving. Researchers found that the drivers tended to show more fatigue, measured by large steering movements, while driving on the more monotonous road.Īlso noteworthy was the fact their fatigue peaked after approximately 20 minutes of driving. ![]() Flat bridges and overpasses also broke up the scenery in several different places. The second road contained multiple visual elements, including trees, farms, signs, and people. The participants “drove” on two different simulated roads for 40 minutes at a time.īoth roads were flat, but the first road only had one type of visual scenery: pine trees spaced equally on either side of the road. ![]() Most existing research on highway hypnosis suggests monotony plays a significant part in this phenomenon.Ī 2003 study used a driving simulator to study the effects of road monotony on 56 experienced male drivers. Here’s a look at some major contributing factors. While highway hypnosis can happen more commonly in tired drivers, fatigue isn’t the only cause. ![]()
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