When Time Stands Still

[Katyusha]

At work one day, there were two of us driving two separate vehicles between stores. We were on a two-lane road and traffic going the other direction was ridiculous, but most people were grinning and bearing it because there was no room to pass. I was in the lead and coming around a bend, this Mack truck swings out into my lane. I swerved around him and almost ended up in the ditch, and to my amazement the jackass kept going. I watched in my rearview mirror as he ran my co-worker off the road behind me. He was fine and got back on the road just fine and we went along to our destination.

Later he asked me if that whole thing had happened in slow-motion for me and it hadn't, but he said everything went slow-motion when he saw me almost get creamed by that truck.

 

[TE999]

Time slowed for me several times...once in a fight when a guy pulled a knife...he missed, I didn't...once when a car spun out in front of me during a rainstorm, missed me by inches and went headlong into a tree...the car crumpled in slow motion...it was weird.

 

[incubus666]

For me it is not a matter of time standing still but of me remembering the happening in flashes. i.e. I ran a car off the road. It went airborn and rolled in the air. I remember flashes as I bounced around inside the car as it rolled. A flash as I was upside down and another with the car rolling to the right and me being torqued to the left.

The same thing when I slipped off a slippery dock as a very young child and a bystander pulled me out of the water by my hair and when a lot of years later I got shot.

Just flashes of bits and pieces of what happened as opposed to everything slowing down.

Just my take on what I remember about dangerous situations.

 

[unregistered]

 

[CharleyH]

Did anyone ever experience that phenomenon when things happen in slow motion? People who were in car accidents probably know what I'm talking about. Has anyone ever experienced this in any situation other than a car accident?

-Sheila

Yes. I have.

 

[MagicaPractica]

I've had it happen a couple times. My Dad used to talk about it happening when he was dealing with an attacker or someone violent (he was a guard on a college campus and dealt with more than you would suspect.) He said he would retire if that ever stopped happening.

 

[damppanties]

Yes. I have.

Well, when and in what situation?

 

[impressive]

Both times I was "under the influence" of pharmaceuticals (one legal, one not), so I don't think they quite count.

 

[NoJo]

Both times I was "under the influence" of pharmaceuticals (one legal, one not), so I don't think they quite count.

It happened to me a number of times under the influence of cocaine and of LSD. Those experiences, where space and time lost their rigid rectiliniarity, helped me appreciate non-Euclidian space-time on a gut-level, instead of as merely formulae.