I was about seventeen and driving down a multi-lane interstate highway in the Midwest in the late morning on a summer day. Everything was bright and clear and the road was dry, not the least hint of any kind of roadway danger — when a small white sub-compact car came whizzing by at very high speed on my left-hand side.
I watched in horror as the driver lost control and the car went spinning and twirling end for end down the road in front of me, and with equal distress saw the two semi-truck trailers, also just in front of me and on either side, both right and left, start veering violently away from the center lane and the wreck happening directly in front of me.
It seemed that I had no options at all. Either I plowed into the white car which was now in my lane, or one or both of those careening truck trailers were going to swing around like a baseball bat and send me to the moon.
In that instant, I found myself looking down at the unfolding drama from a vantage point about three hundred feet above the roadway, and everything that was happening slowed down to a very nice manageable pace.
I could see that the white car was heading to a resting place just beyond the pillars of an upcoming overpass, and that if I just kept driving at the same speed and in the same lane, I'd avoid the whole mess and just shoot past it all. Which I did.
My "eyesight" returned to its normal vantage point, and the slow motion feature went back to normal speed and that was that. But….
How could that be?
Many, many people who have faced truly threatening situations have reported this same perceptual shift, very clearly saying that: "time stopped" or "everything moved in slow motion". Some people, about one in one hundred of those who report the "Slow Motion Effect" also do what I did, and shift the vantage point from which they are viewing the slow motion action.