think the pandemic made you forget how to drive and park?

Do you think the pandemic made you forget how to drive and park?  Experts explain what's going on.

On Sunday afternoon in early May, Robert Johnson retired from his garage and prepared to visit his company's office - a place he had never been to since the coronavirus epidemic. His wife shouted. Johnson applied the brakes. There, in the back of the car, was his dog.

Hitting a parked car while a vehicle is parked in a parallel parking lot.

"I think I forgot to drive," said Johnson, founder of the timber business in Stamford, Conn. And his dog - a "fat and long" mixture of pugs and dachshunds - is no longer used in cars outside the garage. The experience intimidated Johnson by driving more often and, he says.

Jessica Pellien, a journalist in Yardley, Pennsylvania, has similar parking problems. "It's always weird when I park," he said. "I'm working, but it's been two weeks and I haven't been where I was before the epidemic."

In another example of the epidemic in our lives, people report forgetting the driving characteristics. Some no longer remember the paths that once were muscle memories. others get nervous when driving in the dark or working at speed limits.

We asked ourselves: can you really forget skills like driving, especially in the short term? What's going on?

"Rehabilitation may be needed," said Ronald C. Petersen, a neurologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He found that memories are stored in a network in the brain, not just in one location. "These types of memory may not have been used in six months, eight months, or a year. The associated behaviors need to be rehabilitated and rehabilitated, but they still exist."

Driving is an example of process memory, a type of long-term memory that includes motor and meditation skills. Playing tennis is another example, like tying your shoes - things you do without much thought, if any. This is compared with confession memory, which includes recalling facts and events, e.g. B. to remember faces or places and events from the past.

"It's a lot harder to forget," said Elizabeth Walshe, a researcher at the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia. You are studying driving neurosciences. "You will never forget how hard you drive," he said. "But I think there is a rust associated - people don't feel so familiar because they've never done something they used to do two or more times a day."

When the epidemic hit, Walshe stopped cycling for about three weeks. When he started again, the cars he was using on the road also felt very close to what made him scared. Cycling, which he had been doing four times a day, just seemed like "something new," he said, similar to what some riders are now experiencing.

Compare this situation with preparing to get your first driver's license or go abroad and feel uncomfortable driving on the other side of the road. “Everything is stressful and complicated, and your mind feels tired,” he said. "But once you get used to it, you don't have to think about it - about how to control the pedals, wheel or gear lever. It's automatic and only looks at what's happening on the road."

A lot of thinking is needed to ride (or ride a bike) safely: for example, high thinking, decision making, risk calculation, and risk response. It requires interaction between our emotional, motor and cognitive systems. "This is really complicated," said Walshe. "Your mind does a lot that you may not realize."

While basic driving skills may still exist, tasks that require extra care (such as night driving), more precision (parking), or memories that are not readily available (when there is an old hangout), should be replaced. That is true, "even after a short, unusual time," said Robert Kraft, a professor of psychology at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio.

He thinks driving is "unnatural". "We did not turn around and go 70 mph or park the car," he said. "I think we're separated from the car and we've forgotten that."

Unfortunately, dressed drivers are returning to the roads that have been the most dangerous since the epidemic began. According to the National Safety Council, the number of road deaths per mile has increased by 24 percent by 2020 - although the number of kilometers has dropped.

In the early days of the epidemic, Texas road researcher Robert Wunderlich thought that with fewer drivers on the road, the state could see the first day of zero deaths in the twenties. But it was not to be. People are driving faster and recklessly than in the past, he said.

"People have learned to drive differently," said Wunderlich, director of the Traffic Safety Center at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. Speed ​​is one of the major factors in car accidents, and you suspect that during an epidemic, when traffic jams are low, drivers feel free to accelerate. He is not confident that morality will change after the epidemic, which means that roads can remain more dangerous than ever, at least for the foreseeable future.

But for those who are not fast enough their skills need to be improved, practice should help make driving feel natural faster too. Yusuke Yamani, an Associate Professor of Psychology at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, encourages vigilant drivers to focus on the situation, which means scanning the area regularly to detect potential hazards. Turn off the radio and don't play with your phone - it's important to minimize distractions.

"Driving is a natural phenomenon," he said, adding that his friends also felt like they had forgotten to drive during the epidemic. "It takes time to regain these skills, but we also know that people who acquire cognitive skills retain them longer than those who learn them for the first time."

And if you can help, it is best not to panic when you return to the streets. Anxiety can make your brain condition worse
As long as you sit down in the car and start the engine, that will "stimulate all other driving modes," he said. Then, relax. "It's not gone," he said. "You are not lost."

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