GEARS BETWEEN EARS

DOES YOUR MIND NEED A TUNE-UP SO YOU CAN DRIVE BETTER?

In hindsight, I shouldn’t have gotten behind the wheel that dreadful night five years ago, when my mother was wheeled into the hospital after suffering her third stroke. She was attached to a ventilator, tubes of different sizes running into and out of her nostrils, mouth, and arms, through which life-sustaining air, fluids, and drugs coursed. Machines, doctors, and nurses surrounded her, and she was teetering between this life and the next. Seeing her in this state was too much for me, and I hurried out of the hospital distraught and on the verge of a breakdown.

I had to go home and get her some new clothes and other essentials for what could possibly be a long hospital stay. I was alone, and I drove, but my mind was stuck in the hospital, beside my mother as she fought for her life. I hadn’t noticed that the traffic light ahead had switched to red, and before I knew it, my car’s front bumper had gotten into contact with the rear of the vehicle I was following.

I knew the impact of the collision was enough to leave a sizeable dent on that other car’s rear bumper, and any other car owner would have at least alighted from the car, inspected the damage, and glared at me. But that night, a small sliver of good fortune remained with me, as the driver of the other car—bless his kind (or frightened) heart—just ignored the impact and sped away as soon as the light turned green.

This is my first-hand experience of a deeper kind of distracted driving—the sort that isn’t as temporary as glancing at your cellphone or tinkering with the car’s controls. This is the one that gnaws at your consciousness the entire time you’re behind the wheel; the kind that makes your eyes still see the road while your mind wanders someplace else far, far away.

Mind over motor. This is always the case whenever anyone gets behind the wheel and drives. The body simply translates into physical motion what the brain orders it to do. Would anyone argue that the brain is unaffected by external stimuli, either traumatic or pleasurable? My brain was distressed at the time I wasn’t certain if I would still see my mother alive again the next day. My mind was too preoccupied with grief, and when the visual stimuli shifted (the green light changing to red), my mind was not alert enough to tell my body to step on the brakes.

A 2012 article I wrote for this section discussed the “wandering minds” of bus drivers. Buses being among the largest land-based vehicles carrying the most human lives, their drivers carry the heavy burden of public safety and responsibility. But bus drivers are human, and they do experience a range of emotions and moods, many of which affect their driving behaviors.

In that article, I wrote about a sensitivity exercise conducted by the Land Transportation Office on public utility bus drivers who had recently figured in road accidents. As it turned out, these were what was running in their minds at the moment of the accident:

“Hinahanapan ng pera ng asawa (Wife demanding money),”

“Problema sa kabit (trouble with the mistress),” “di makasiping ang asawa (couldn’t make love with the wife),” “delay sa sahod (salary delayed),”

“walang sahod (no salary),” “utang (debts),” “pabaon sa anak (allowance of children),” “diperensya ng sasakyan na di pa naayos (vehicle problems that haven’t been fixed),” “damay sa suspension ng kasamahan na nakagawa ng kasalanan (being suspended because of a colleague’s fault).”