Lack of adrenaline

So just got home from taking my kid to his cub scout meeting. Snowing pretty damn hard when we left. I was rolling down thw backroad at about 50mph, and the stop sign kind of jumped out at me. I saw a car on the crossroad that was perfectly timed to be right where I was going to be when I got there as the ABS brakes were grinding away trying to slow my pickup down. I see it is going to be pretty damn close so I turn it to the left and throw it into the ditch. I hit the ditch, up through and across the road and through a farm fence into a corn field. My kid in the passenger seat is a bit freaked out and scared. Thing is, my heart rate never raised a bit. I asked the boy if he is OK, and he says his heart is racing. I drove the truck further into the field and turned it around, aimed for the road and drove it out and continued on to his event.

Shouldn't something like this get a person a bit excited? Or shaking? Or panicked?

 

If you have experience racing, managing a crisis is much easier with that under your belt than people who dont have it.

There are studies of personalities with regards to emergencies. Racers fall into relatively into the same catagory as pilots. They deal with stress much better.

 

You weren’t in a van, so...

 

Well played.

 

It’s the equivalent of a missed brake marker and your brain processing several exit routes at the same time, while picking one of the best.
Practiced several times at the track, applied in situations like these —> safe outcome.

 

So you were driving faster than conditions allow, blow a stop sign, put your kid in danger, just about take out another innocent motorist, drove thru a farmer's fence...and left the scene of an accident.

Now you come on here to tell us how brave you are.

What the hell???

 

Well there was a “jumping” stop sign...

 

There are people who shit a brick in those moments, I use to when I was a kid. Not the same anymore. As noted youve been trained to look for options and exits, nothing you can do to undo where you are, just what happens next.

 

Well, hopefully it's just because you're calm in the face of stressful situations and not a medical condition causing some kind of adrenal insufficiency like Addison's disease.....although I think that's a situation where the adrenals produce insufficient cortisol, not adrenaline.

 

seems about right for a racer to me also. Ive had a few really bad street car crashes with no serious injuries. in all of them it was the slow-mo effect but dont remember any adrenaline rush afterwards.

 

Yup, can totally agree. A few years back I hit a full grown buck on my son's motorcycle, coming home from work late at night. I came around a corner and there was 3 right in the middle of the road. I never panicked, did not target fixate in the deer. Instead I was braking while steering the bike into an open slot between the deer. The stupid buck just WALKED into my line. I was never afraid, just remember vividly say, "Well this will hurt." Next thing I was laying on my back in a ditch looking up at the sky. I did my "check" of all my limbs. Got to my shoulder and could easily tell my collar bone was smashed. Sat up, took off my helmet and waited for the ambulance after a car driver pulled over to help and called 911. Never once felt scared. I give 100% credit to racing.

Funny enough, the ER doc argued with me about what was broken. I flat out told her it was my collar bone only. She didn't believe me until she saw the x-rays. I told her I've been through this many times.

 

I’m the same way. Things just seem to slow down in stressful/panic situations and I work through it.

 

And people make fun of Atlanta drivers in the snow..LOL... Glad your ok... Now slow down....and pay for the fence..

 

Oddly enough - I can lose traction on the ice and find a way out, run into a burning building, Scrape someone off the side of a busy highway, or enter into any medical emergency - and don't notice any changes in my body except focus. A super refined focus that allows me to see a path and hear what is happening around me.

But trap me in the back of a van without my phone and watch my lizard brain take over - the flight syndrome stops any rational thought - heart rate increase & breath increase to get muscles working, can't hear, can't feel - there is a zeroing in effect that happens the instant an escape route is found. Out is the only thought. That is the irrational response to adrenaline that we are supposed to avoid succumbing to. One I have trained out on the road and in a fire/EMS situation. One I have not trained out in completely unfamiliar locations.

You are getting adrenaline - it's just that your training and knowledge has allowed you to function through the dump and you use to your advantage.

 

Well, at least you didn't wake up naked behind a 7/11 with one testicle painted red and the other one green and a feather duster stuck up your ass.

 

It is weird because my brain is usually going 164mph all the time, and on the racetrack is actually when things slow down and make sense for me. That is one of the biggest things that kept me coming back to the track in the beginning, the relaxation, calmness, and "at home" feeling I got while on the track. It was almost like having a therapy session.

I don't want to jinx it, but I have never had a motor vehicle crash in my life, and I drive like an asshole. There have been several times when I probably should have crashed, but in those situations it is like everything slows down and I weigh multiple outcomes while either speeding up/slowing down/turning/etc to avoid it. But I never feel any panic. I just get through it, think "that almost sucked", and carry on.

 

I did a bungee jump with a group of backpackers once, everyone was saying what an adrenaline rush. I said try being highsided at 70+mph, that's an adrenaline rush, they all looked at me as if I was mad.

 

This.

There have been times at work when things were going apeshit, people were panicking, and a wrong move could have resulted in a Deepwater Horizon incident. I never feel panic or out of control, and times like that are when I am at my best. Ill just immediately start being like "I am doing this right now, you monitor those two gauges and start a trend tracker, you increase the pressure on these, you line up returns to go through there, you get the company rep up here, you put up barriers to seal off the rig floor, you station your guys over there, there, and there" so on and so forth.

BUT, let me find myself suddenly "trapped" in the back corner of a tightly packed elevator and all hell is about to break loose. I never have good reactions to the "fight or flight" syndrome; I immediately lose all rational thought and go into "fight mode".

 

Yes, it was stupid, and I was not focused on the conditions, just talking with my kid. First time ever in 29yrs of driving I have put a vehicle in the ditch, and I often drive backroads like an idtio, as I enjoy driving in the snow and sliding around.

Fence is not used for not pasture anymore, and is falling down anyways. Not owned by a farmer, just a large natural gas producer/distributor. They bought the property to lessen complaints of noise from close neighbours of the pumping station on that block.