Foggy perception slows us down

Fog is an atmospheric phenomenon that afflicts millions of drivers every day, impairing visibility and increasing the risk of an accident. The ways people respond to conditions of reduced visibility is a central topic in vision research. It has been shown that people tend to underestimate speeds when visibility is reduced equally at all distances, as for example, when driving with a uniformly fogged windshield. But what happens when the visibility decreases as you look further into the distance, as happens when driving in true fog? New research by Paolo Pretto at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen published in eLife, reveals that people tend to overestimate their speed when driving in fog-like conditions and therefore naturally tend to drive at a slower pace.