The bizarre phenomenon called 'highway hypnosis' that motorists should beware of during long drives

It's pretty obvious that not keeping your eyes on the road can lead to fatal accidents, but what if looking at the road for too long becomes the reason for a car crash instead? A Reddit post shared by u/gullydon on the r/todayilearned subreddit enlightened unassuming people about a strange phenomenon called highway hypnosis, which many drivers had faced during mundane and long drives. "Today I learned that highway hypnosis, also known as white line fever, is an altered mental state in which a person can drive a car, truck, or other automobile great distances, responding to external events in the expected, safe, and correct manner with no recollection of having consciously done so," the post read.

Many people in the comment section who were unaware of this phenomenon were curious and alarmed about it. Some people joked about "letting our unconsciousness take over" while driving but others added some pointers about this phenomenon for those who had no idea about it. u/Bokbreath wrote: "It's not just highways. Ever planned to deviate from your regular route and found yourself in your garage as usual without the planned detour?" u/hoarder59 shared: "You don't need to be tired for this. You are just used to driving and it does not mean you are not attentive. I am a long haul driver and once drove 150 miles past my exit because I was listening to a podcast."

u/willx2k added: "For me, I feel driving is a passive action most of the time. it is very dangerous don't get me wrong. Just half the time I won't remember if I stopped at a red light or if it was green. I wouldn't remember if I made a full stop at a stop sign or even used my signals to turn. It's almost an automated process I do passively. Unless you're in traffic with a lot going on around you. Then it would be active driving. So constantly paying attention to everything around you. But in lighter traffic, it's less of a worry and becomes passive driving."

"This is what you sometimes experience as a driver when you can't recall the previous few seconds of your journey," Paul Watters of the Automobile Association in the UK, told BBC. "It's a strange feeling. You're not necessarily inattentive but you're in a slightly different state. I don't think it means you're going to have an accident but it means you're not completely engaged in the task of driving, so we would advise members not to get distracted like this." Jim Horne of the Sleep Research Centre of Loughborough University explained that "experiencing highway hypnosis doesn't mean that someone is falling asleep." "It's like reading a newspaper at breakfast but you're not taking in the words because you're listening to what's going on in the kitchen," Horne told the outlet.

"When we're tired, effectively there's a change in the state of our brain that results in that information just not getting to those centers where we actively, consciously process it," Sean Meehan, a University of Michigan kinesiology professor, explained to ABC News. "I'm sure most people experienced this on a long trip where all of a sudden they realize they really haven't been aware of what they're doing." According to the National Safety Council, a study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety estimated that 328,000 drowsy driving crashes occur annually, more than three times the police-reported number.