<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Highway Hypnosis is the driving hazard du jour, thanks in large part to the defense for the allegedly consciousness-challenged conductor of the New York commuter train that derailed last month. That&amp;#039;s the defense of his attorneys, who say he was not technically asleep while taking a 30 MPH turn at a screaming 80-plus, killing four people and injuring sixty more. While it may have been brutally thrust into the spotlight just weeks ago, White Line Fever has been a sleeping giant in the automotive accident game for years now. The AAA estimates that one in every six deadly car wrecks is due to drowsy driving, which is the gateway to Highway Hypnosis. The National Sleep Foundation found in 2005 that the cost of accidents related to tired drivers was between $29 and $37 billion. We&amp;#039;ve all been there. You&amp;#039;re driving down the road, usually on a route you&amp;#039;ve taken dozens of times, and then suddenly -- boom! -- you&amp;#039;ve arrived at your destination without any solid memory of the actual journey from A to B. It&amp;#039;s as if your brain wants to spare you the monotony, but it&amp;#039;s actually a form of hypnosis. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s almost a fascination with what we&amp;#039;re doing. We&amp;#039;re in and out of hypnosis all day long,&amp;quot; explained Dr. Dwight Damon, the president of the National Guild of Hypnotists. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s like when you&amp;#039;re watching a show and you&amp;#039;re really just enraptured by what&amp;#039;s going on on the television screen - that&amp;#039;s a form of hypnosis. If you wife says it&amp;#039;s time for supper, you don&amp;#039;t even hear her, because you&amp;#039;re detaching the unconscious and the conscious self.&amp;quot; The NSF study found that 60% of adult drivers had driven drowsy, and 37% admitted falling asleep at the wheel. This &amp;quot;fascination&amp;quot; is much more likely to occur when the driver is tired and their mental acuity is less sharp. And that ten gallons of red number five laced energy concoction you mainlined at the last truck stop? It may not be helping all that much. &amp;quot;Highway Hypnosis is more about mental focus. So caffeine and all those stimulants, they just help the physical fatigue, You&amp;#039;re staying awake,&amp;quot; said Joshua Maxwell, an engineer with the Hyundai Kia America Technical Center. &amp;quot;Highway Hypnosis comes at that point where you&amp;#039;ve been staring off into space to the point where you can&amp;#039;t concentrate on that spot anymore.&amp;quot; But fear not, over-stimulated and under-rested highway denizens, help is on the way. Maxwell and his crew of resident geniuses at the HKATC have partnered with the University of Michigan to bring some serious science to bear on the problem, and the results are straight outta sci-fi. They&amp;#039;re making a car that can literally read your mind. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re investigating different technologies monitoring driver&amp;#039;s brainwaves in order to get a better picture of their concentration level, their alertness level, and the ways to use them to eventually make a warning system,&amp;quot; Maxwell described, not a hint of fatigue in his voice. After seeing video games that allowed the user to move a digital ball or train like a Jedi by focusing their concentration, he knew that the technology was there. And while completely controlling your Kia Soul with just your mind is way, way in the future (probably right around the time we&amp;#039;ve actually tweaked hamster&amp;#039;s DNA enough that they really can drive and breakdance) cruising in your Accent while it charts your cranial electricity could be just a few years out. &amp;quot;The technology is just getting to the point where we can move it out of a medical state and into a more user customer electronics phase,&amp;quot; Maxwell noted. &amp;quot;It would mostly just be for monitoring the driver&amp;#039;s conscious state. Possibly to help with doing alerts through Blue Link, which is similar to Onstar, to notify emergency services should a seizure happen or a stroke or that sort of medical emergency.&amp;quot; But until cars can hack your headspace, we&amp;#039;re left with more analog methods of combating taking a mental trip too far down the spaceout rabbit hole. Which means that, ultimately, you should just unplug and get enough sleep in the first place. Think of it as your holiday gift to everyone on the highway. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a26522/highway-hypnosis-and-cars-that-read-your-mind/>