While driving, have you ever had the experience where you exit a high-speed freeway and suddenly the lower speed limits on local roads seem super slow?
From my time back in driver’s education, I learned that the feeling is called velocitization. If you’ve never heard of it, here’s a definition I found on the Hamilton Police website:
Velocitization is the phenomenon that driver’s experience when driving at a high rate of speed for extended periods of time and the speed no longer feels as fast when they enter into a zone with a slower posted speed limit.
So I’ve been wondering, when Indy car and Formula 1 and other high speed racers finish a long day at the races, do they face extreme velocitization? Better get someone else to drive home after the race.
What about pilots, after they have been flying a plane for a couple hours at several hundred miles and hour, do they feel that the 40 miles-per-hour taxiing speed is ridiculous?
You have solved a long-time question for me with this posting.
I used to suffer this very problem whenever I would get done with skating (inline and otherwise) and return to walking. It was always brief, but very noticeable.
Thanks CMD!
I wonder if this explains why I always have to move really slowly after I finish a run. Must just be velocitization, not exhaustion as I’d previously assumed.
when you are in a pressurized airplane you really don’t feel the speed at which you are traveling!! so i am not sure if velocitization has any effect. But yes once you land and when inside a cab you think you just made 350 miles in an hour and a half, and the cab can’t get you to the hotel which is 6 miles in an hour(traffic), it tests your patience.
Maybe it might hold good for fighter pilots who fly non-pressurized airplanes, who experience high g forces. I am not sure.
But don’t worry if u get a commercial pilot to drive u back, he will keep you safe if he is a good driver!! 🙂
@ Savan
Thanks for the comments. I wondered when we’d find a real pilot to chime in. Now it seems we need to find a fighter pilot to chime in!
What about the opposite, pokeyzation, which is when you get so used to slow things that you feel everyone is whirring around you? Walking is susceptible to this.
Velocitation usually diminishes when you change from one car to another. There’s a psychological reason. The environment has changed so your brain uses different subconsious initiatives to interact with it. Velocitation is a result of our subconsious mind using predefine constructs to a known situation. This also explains the scating-walking phenomenon.