Have you ever noticed that many times when drunk drivers are invovled in car accidents they sometimes walk away from accidents that seem impossible for them to walk away from?

I have wondered about this too.

And many times, others who are involved in the accident are either seriously injured or even killed while the drunk driver somehow manages to survive or completely avoids any bodily damage.

This evening I was riding my <a href="http://www.seyer.com/blanco/images/138-3889_IMG.jpg">Goldwing</a> and I approached a stop light...  To my right was a very narrow lane for making right turns.

I glanced at the pavement and noticed that my right foot was very close to the right turn lane.   Suddenly, without warning I heard the swish of a car entering the turning lane and the experience seemed to put fear into every inch of my body.

I wasn't hurt... in fact the car was at least a foot from my foot (no pun intended).   

Curiously, at the moment that I experienced the fear, I had the thought that if the car actually had run over my foot, I had a choice to experience pain or not.    

This made me think.  

Was I fearful of getting hurt?  Or was I experiencing an expected outcome for that particular situation?

In other words, could it be that my 'belief' in the expected outcome (which is obvioulsy tainted by my prior experiences which include fear) is actually a major contributor to the experiences that I experience?

And if the car had actually run over my foot it, would my 'belief' in the expected damage to my foot be a contributing factor in its demise?  

Additionally, could I 'choose' to believe that my foot was unaffected by the car?

Ok, admittedly this is sounding crazy and 'out there', but try to follow what I'm getting at here.

We experience pain because we 'interpret' signals presented to us by the various receptors in our body parts and then we have the pain experience.   

However, hypnotherapy has shown us that our 'interpretation' of those signals can be manipulated in ways that are not  traditional.   (i.e. pain experienced as pleasure,  or no pain at all).

<i>The following are thought provoking points that support what I'm leading up to.</i>

<ol>

<li><a href="http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/18/3/5">Quantum Physics</a> has shown us that our belief in an expected outcome influences the physical outcome of a quantum experiment.    The observer and the experiment are inseperable.    The observers expectation in the outcome of the Quantum experiment determines the outcome.</li><br />

<li><a href="http://www.hado.net/index2.html">Dr. Masaru Emoto</a> has shown us that our thoughts can and do affect water.    (i.e. 'praising' a glass of water produces perfectly formed ice crystals, while 'damming' a glass of water produces deformed and dark ice crystals).</li><br />

<li>Whether you attribute <a href="http://skepdic.com/placebo.html">The Placebo Effect</a>'s success to the physical or the psychological, it is undeniable that it has a measurable effect on patients.  </li><br />

<li>The quantity and quality of experiments that have been carried out by <a href="http://www.mum.edu/m_effect/">The Maharishi University</a> studying the <a href="">Maharishi Effect</a>  (the effect of 1% of a population practicing <a href="http://www.tm.org/">Transendental Meditation</a>) along with the data and logical conclusions that must be drawn from the results of those experiments are staggering and awe inspiring.  (i.e. a percentage of a population's peaceful thoughts affect the remaining population's actions.</li>

</ol>


Back to the drunk driver...

What if the drunk driver is not 'aware' that he is in danger?  And because of this, he simply does not participate in a 'belief' that he will be harmed.

What if his conciousness is so affected by alcohol and is so 'focused' on something other than what his body is experiencing that he simply 'misses' the opportunity to animate his body into a damaged state?

He is obviously not experiencing fear... or is oblivious to it...  He simply lives 'through' the experience because he's pre-occupied with something else.

Food for thought.