One afternoon, while driving through Playa del Rey, I was following a woman in a convertible who was swerving in and out of the lane—a dangerous activity on any road, but especially here, with the narrow lanes and blind turns. Upon reaching a stop light I easily spot the phone in her hand.
After my unwelcome criticism of her complete disregard for the safety of fellow drivers, she laughs and manages to blurt out, “Everyone does it.” Well, no, not everyone, but as a new study by researchers from Queensland University of Technology shows, a majority of drivers do not believe texting and driving is dangerous despite growing mounds of data proving the opposite.
A questionnaire was answered by 447 drivers in Australia, 296 of which were female. The two-part survey began with questions about the drivers’ age, gender, annual mileage, and experiences with multitasking, especially as it pertains to smartphones. The second half presented six driving scenarios pertaining to the risks of crashes related to distracted driving, including driving in light traffic along a suburban street, driving in heavy traffic on a highway, and pulling onto an entry ramp. The conclusion:
Results indicated that drivers who are female, are frequent users of phones for texting/answering calls, have less favorable attitudes towards safety, and are highly disinhibited were more likely to report stronger intentions of engaging in mobile phone multitasking.
Interestingly, data show that distracted driving increases in economically depressed countries. Rates in Botswana and Mexico are 31.2 percent while Australia and the United States range from 5 to 18.7 percent. Of course, self-reported numbers have to be taken lightly. Anecdotally, Los Angeles is a minefield of inattention. On numerous occasions I’ve been surrounded on all four sides by screen-gazing drivers.
Drivers of vehicles are distracted while driving including talking on phone, eating, drinking and applying makeup, January 13, 2011 in Long Beach, California. (Photo by Bob Riha Jr./Getty Images)
When drivers choose to engage with their phone is also an issue. Some only peek while at a red light or in heavy traffic. Others wait for stop signs. I’ve known more than a few people who leave it in their lap for whenever the occasion strikes; I’ve also witnessed drivers purposefully slow down to get caught at a red light in order to peruse Instagram.
As the researchers note, talking on a phone increases the likelihood of a crash by 2.2 times; texting while driving, a whopping 6.1 times. With nine people killed and over a thousand injured in the United States every day, the idea that distracted driving is not a serious problem is farcical.
The researchers note that, despite growing legislation attempting to curb this issue, the single best strategy we currently have is “tactical self-regulation,” which isn’t a reliable technique at all. Self-regulation is never a good bet. It’s like telling an alcoholic to “just stop drinking.” Addiction doesn’t work that way.
As John Morgan Wilson writes, after jumping onto the hood of a texting driver’s car to save himself:
Our legal deterrents aren't helping. California law bans all talking, texting, or any other use of handheld mobile phones while driving… Yet here in California, according to the CHP, the number of citations issued declined slightly in recent years from a peak of 460,000 in 2011. Experts spread the blame: budget and staffing issues at policing agencies; increased use of car speakerphones (which free the hands but still cause distraction); and officers who are reluctant to ticket a violation that's difficult to prove in court—or for an activity many officers privately indulge in themselves.
Pre-existing beliefs about the nature of attention play an important role. Distracted drivers tend to think that as soon as their gaze returns to the road their attention is on the street, though decades of studies regarding attentional capacities prove otherwise. The attentional lag that occurs after engaging with your phone, along with attentional drift (thinking about the next text while approaching a light or stop sign), creates a recipe for disaster.
And yet, our so-called “sixth sense” factors into our behavior on the road. University of Houston computer science professor Ioannis Pavlidis, who has studied this issue, comments:
The driver’s mind can wander and his or her feelings may boil, but a sixth sense keeps a person safe at least in terms of veering off course. What makes texting so dangerous is that it wreaks havoc onto this sixth sense.
While the average respondent in the Australia study had a valid driver’s license for an average of 11.26 years, ages varied from 16 to 70. Unsurprisingly, more experienced drivers are more likely to refrain from distracted driving. Gender, as noted, also plays an essential role. Traffic conditions (light traffic on a suburban street versus entering a highway, for example) were also considered. The frequency of immediately responding to texts or calls (instead of ignoring the alerts) increased the likelihood of distraction: participants that check whenever they hear their phone are more likely to do so while driving.
For those drivers that feel using their phone while behind the wheel is just how society is, they also claim they need “a lot of convincing” to show them otherwise—a whopping 68% of people in the study are unconvinced that it is dangerous. Unfortunately that convincing occurs through injury or death. By the time they realize their ignorance it’s too late. Until tech companies work in conjunction with federal governments to stop this trend, little is going to change.
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U.S. Navy ships
The U.S. Navy controls patents for some futuristic and outlandish technologies, some of which, dubbed "the UFO patents," came to light recently. Of particular note are inventions by the somewhat mysterious Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais, whose tech claims to be able to "engineer reality." His slate of highly-ambitious, borderline sci-fi designs meant for use by the U.S. government range from gravitational wave generators and compact fusion reactors to next-gen hybrid aerospace-underwater crafts with revolutionary propulsion systems, and beyond.
Of course, the existence of patents does not mean these technologies have actually been created, but there is evidence that some demonstrations of operability have been successfully carried out. As investigated and reported by The War Zone, a possible reason why some of the patents may have been taken on by the Navy is that the Chinese military may also be developing similar advanced gadgets.
Among Dr. Pais's patents are designs, approved in 2018, for an aerospace-underwater craft of incredible speed and maneuverability. This cone-shaped vehicle can potentially fly just as well anywhere it may be, whether air, water or space, without leaving any heat signatures. It can achieve this by creating a quantum vacuum around itself with a very dense polarized energy field. This vacuum would allow it to repel any molecule the craft comes in contact with, no matter the medium. Manipulating "quantum field fluctuations in the local vacuum energy state," would help reduce the craft's inertia. The polarized vacuum would dramatically decrease any elemental resistance and lead to "extreme speeds," claims the paper.
Not only that, if the vacuum-creating technology can be engineered, we'd also be able to "engineer the fabric of our reality at the most fundamental level," states the patent. This would lead to major advancements in aerospace propulsion and generating power. Not to mention other reality-changing outcomes that come to mind.
Among Pais's other patents are inventions that stem from similar thinking, outlining pieces of technology necessary to make his creations come to fruition. His paper presented in 2019, titled "Room Temperature Superconducting System for Use on a Hybrid Aerospace Undersea Craft," proposes a system that can achieve superconductivity at room temperatures. This would become "a highly disruptive technology, capable of a total paradigm change in Science and Technology," conveys Pais.
High frequency gravitational wave generator.
Credit: Dr. Salvatore Pais
Another invention devised by Pais is an electromagnetic field generator that could generate "an impenetrable defensive shield to sea and land as well as space-based military and civilian assets." This shield could protect from threats like anti-ship ballistic missiles, cruise missiles that evade radar, coronal mass ejections, military satellites, and even asteroids.
Dr. Pais's ideas center around the phenomenon he dubbed "The Pais Effect". He referred to it in his writings as the "controlled motion of electrically charged matter (from solid to plasma) via accelerated spin and/or accelerated vibration under rapid (yet smooth) acceleration-deceleration-acceleration transients." In less jargon-heavy terms, Pais claims to have figured out how to spin electromagnetic fields in order to contain a fusion reaction – an accomplishment that would lead to a tremendous change in power consumption and an abundance of energy.
According to his bio in a recently published paper on a new Plasma Compression Fusion Device, which could transform energy production, Dr. Pais is a mechanical and aerospace engineer working at the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD), which is headquartered in Patuxent River, Maryland. Holding a Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, Pais was a NASA Research Fellow and worked with Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems. His current Department of Defense work involves his "advanced knowledge of theory, analysis, and modern experimental and computational methods in aerodynamics, along with an understanding of air-vehicle and missile design, especially in the domain of hypersonic power plant and vehicle design." He also has expert knowledge of electrooptics, emerging quantum technologies (laser power generation in particular), high-energy electromagnetic field generation, and the "breakthrough field of room temperature superconductivity, as related to advanced field propulsion."
Suffice it to say, with such a list of research credentials that would make Nikola Tesla proud, Dr. Pais seems well-positioned to carry out groundbreaking work.
A craft using an inertial mass reduction device.
Credit: Salvatore Pais
The patents won't necessarily lead to these technologies ever seeing the light of day. The research has its share of detractors and nonbelievers among other scientists, who think the amount of energy required for the fields described by Pais and his ideas on electromagnetic propulsions are well beyond the scope of current tech and are nearly impossible. Yet investigators at The War Zone found comments from Navy officials that indicate the inventions are being looked at seriously enough, and some tests are taking place.
If you'd like to read through Pais's patents yourself, check them out here.
Laser Augmented Turbojet Propulsion System
Credit: Dr. Salvatore Pais
As he described it, “In my mind's eye I saw many, many things: children that I hadn't even had yet, friends that I had never seen but are now my friends. The thing that really stuck in my mind was playing an instrument". Then Tony landed on his head and lost consciousness.
When he came to at the hospital, he felt like a different person and didn't want to return to his previous life. Over the following weeks, the images kept flashing back into his mind. He felt that he was “being shown something" and that the images represented his future.
Later, Tony saw a picture of a saxophone and recognized it as the instrument he'd seen himself playing. He used his compensation money from the accident to buy one. Now, Tony Kofi is one of the UK's most successful jazz musicians, having won the BBC Jazz awards twice, in 2005 and 2008.
Though Tony's belief that he saw into his future is uncommon, it's by no means uncommon for people to report witnessing multiple scenes from their past during split-second emergency situations. After all, this is where the phrase “my life flashed before my eyes" comes from.
But what explains this phenomenon? Psychologists have proposed a number of explanations, but I'd argue the key to understanding Tony's experience lies in a different interpretation of time itself.
When life flashes before our eyes
The experience of life flashing before one's eyes has been reported for well over a century. In 1892, a Swiss geologist named Albert Heim fell from a precipice while mountain climbing. In his account of the fall, he wrote is was “as if on a distant stage, my whole past life [was] playing itself out in numerous scenes".
More recently, in July 2005, a young woman called Gill Hicks was sitting near one of the bombs that exploded on the London Underground. In the minutes after the accident, she hovered on the brink of death where, as she describes it: “my life was flashing before my eyes, flickering through every scene, every happy and sad moment, everything I have ever done, said, experienced".
In some cases, people don't see a review of their whole lives, but a series of past experiences and events that have special significance to them.
Explaining life reviews
Perhaps surprisingly, given how common it is, the “life review experience" has been studied very little. A handful of theories have been put forward, but they're understandably tentative and rather vague.
For example, a group of Israeli researchers suggested in 2017 that our life events may exist as a continuum in our minds, and may come to the forefront in extreme conditions of psychological and physiological stress.
Another theory is that, when we're close to death, our memories suddenly “unload" themselves, like the contents of a skip being dumped. This could be related to “cortical disinhibition" – a breaking down of the normal regulatory processes of the brain – in highly stressful or dangerous situations, causing a “cascade" of mental impressions.
But the life review is usually reported as a serene and ordered experience, completely unlike the kind of chaotic cascade of experiences associated with cortical disinhibition. And none of these theories explain how it's possible for such a vast amount of information – in many cases, all the events of a person's life – to manifest themselves in a period of a few seconds, and often far less.
Thinking in 'spatial' time
An alternative explanation is to think of time in a “spatial" sense. Our commonsense view of time is as an arrow that moves from the past through the present towards the future, in which we only have direct access to the present. But modern physics has cast doubt on this simple linear view of time.
Indeed, since Einstein's theory of relativity, some physicists have adopted a “spatial" view of time. They argue we live in a static “block universe" in which time is spread out in a kind of panorama where the past, the present and the future co-exist simultaneously.
The modern physicist Carlo Rovelli – author of the best-selling The Order of Time – also holds the view that linear time doesn't exist as a universal fact. This idea reflects the view of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, who argued that time is not an objectively real phenomenon, but a construct of the human mind.
This could explain why some people are able to review the events of their whole lives in an instant. A good deal of previous research – including my own – has suggested that our normal perception of time is simply a product of our normal state of consciousness.
In many altered states of consciousness, time slows down so dramatically that seconds seem to stretch out into minutes. This is a common feature of emergency situations, as well as states of deep meditation, experiences on psychedelic drugs and when athletes are “in the zone".
The limits of understanding
But what about Tony Kofi's apparent visions of his future? Did he really glimpse scenes from his future life? Did he see himself playing the saxophone because somehow his future as a musician was already established?
There are obviously some mundane interpretations of Tony's experience. Perhaps, for instance, he became a saxophone player simply because he saw himself playing it in his vision. But I don't think it's impossible that Tony did glimpse future events.
If time really does exist in a spatial sense – and if it's true that time is a construct of the human mind – then perhaps in some way future events may already be present, just as past events are still present.
Admittedly, this is very difficult to make sense of. But why should everything make sense to us? As I have suggested in a recent book, there must be some aspects of reality that are beyond our comprehension. After all, we're just animals, with a limited awareness of reality. And perhaps more than any other phenomenon, this is especially true of time.
Steve Taylor, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Leeds Beckett University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
