On long tedious journeys we all experience 'autopilot' syndrome, and I am no exception. You just sit there mile after mile, your brain wanders from time to time due to the tedium. It's a bit scary when you suddenly realise that you weren't truly paying attention to the road and can't remember the apparent few miles you just covered. However, I did listen to a discussion about this on the radio and some scientist or other has proved that you may be in this mind phase but that you will react to varying conditions on the road as your brain is apparently still 'working' on the driving. If something occurs that requires your reaction or correction in some way, the brain will snap into driving mode immediately. I have experienced this effect too but it would be interesting to see reaction times and figures as a comparison.
As far as being lucky is concerned, there are too many incidents to relate and not all driving ones but one springs to mind where the other guy was the lucky one:
I'm diving down the A1 in the outside lane at 70, there are four of us in the car and the inner lane is full. The outer lane is also busy but more sparsly populated and i have a very large distance between myself and the car in front but have one on my tail.
Suddenly, there is a pedestrian standing in my lane and he is carrying armfuls of what appears to be crisp and bottles of pop and he is obviously trying to cross the carriagway to get to the other side. I had about one second to react to this situation and in that short space of time I had decided to run him down!
I didn't come to that conclusion because I resented his presence there, he had frozen at the sight of my car bearing down on him. Mine was a calculated decision which came at lightning speed and it amazed me how rapidly the human brain can calculate a life and death decision. In that brief moment I had decided I could not swerve because we would either hit the barrier or the cars on the inner lane... total carnage, possibly kill people. I could not brake, there was no time and an emergency breaking situation with a car up my backside would have also resulted in total carnage and possibly kill people. I simply took my foot off the throttle and gripped the wheel as I could see him in my minds eye, either going over the roof and bonnet or possibly coming through the windscreen. I didn't even have time to yell out and warn the passengers and simply decided he was going to die. All this happened in the blink of an eye
At the last fraction of a second, he dived for the barrier and crisps and plastic bottles went flying everywhere. To this day, I don't know how he did it but he was nanoseconds away from ringing his bell. I was in total shock but couldn't do anything about it as there was nowhere to stop or pull over.
I have never experienced such a moment of clarity in my life as I did that day when I decided I was about to kill somone by a calculated decision.
He was the luckiest bloke to be alive.