Interesting bit is that reaction times aren't meaningfully better with pro athletes. The difference is that they can predict what is going to happen next from given info better. I read a sports medicine study where they did things like show people images with the ball removed and ask them to predict where the ball was. Pro level players were much better at that, but generally the same 200-250ms range in untrained reaction speed.
In that context, looking ahead is about giving yourself more information from which to predict. If you're looking 10ft in front your hood you don't even know about the next cone, or maybe the tire that came off a car and is bouncing at you.
This is a significant part of the situational awareness that everyone should be practicing, both inside and outside a car. Be alert. See what might be coming. Start forming a plan. Anyone who says they're bored when driving is not doing it correctly. Your eyes and your mind should be pretty much constantly busy.
That's an excellent reframing JG. I'm going to steal that for use in my own instructing.
Your eyes are like headlights. If they aren't pointed up enough, you can easily outdrive them.
Msterbee said:
This is a significant part of the situational awareness that everyone should be practicing, both inside and outside a car. Be alert. See what might be coming. Start forming a plan. Anyone who says they're bored when driving is not doing it correctly. Your eyes and your mind should be pretty much constantly busy.
As I driver education instructor I preach this constantly. And looking up/ahead transfers to other skills and arenas. The HS hockey players I teach understand this when they come around the back of the net with their head down.
Regarding boredom. I tell my students to identify things. Not just a house. A blue house with white shutters. Not just a barn. A red barn with most of the roof missing. If you engage the brain you have more information to work with and the brain remains malleable.
Tom1200
UltimaDork
6/13/25 11:44 p.m.
The only thing I would add to this excellent advice is that opening up your periphal vision is key element that needs to be coordinated with looking ahead.
If you actually have to look at your turn in point, versus using your peripheral vision, that target fixing will not let you look ahead.
An added complication is thick A-pillars that can block the view around a corner. I sometimes have to look out the side window to see far enough ahead.
Great piece, JG. Best I've read on the topic in awhile.
I especially like using the term "scan". Your eye/brain continuum works best when the eyes are moving and not fixed on a target. Spatial awareness in a moving frame of reference needs that kind of data for your super-computer brain.
When I'm in a performance slump, it's almost always because I have gotten lazy and am not scanning ahead often/far enough.
And you know that section of every tire test when I talk about a warm-up session on non-test tires to clean the track and dial in driving? That second part is key to consistency. On a track where I have thousands of laps, the tendency is strong to be lazy with the eyes.
As someone who instructed at autocross schools for decades, teaching over a thousand students, I can count on one hand the folks that exhibited this skill as novices. Names like Peters, Corn, Buetzer and....Hollis.
Not me -- my wife Ann. This is her very first autocross. Took me many years to learn this. She just did it.
FWIW, whenever I ask Jerry for advice at an autocross, his reply usually boils down to “look ahead.”
He’s never wrong.
