The Notorious F-O-G
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Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow and this is The Weather Notebook. Yesterday on the show, I spoke with perceptual psychologist Robert Snowden about his research having to do with fog and the perception of drivers.

Now, his research took place at the University of Wales and in it he suggested that conditions where visibility is reduced by fog, an object will appear to be moving slower than it really is. The next step in testing his theories was to set up a real-world simulator. Professor Snowden explains:

Early morning radiation fog. NOAA Photo Collection

Robert: "What we did was set up a virtual reality simulator. Which simulated the view you get as you drive down a road. And that way we were able to then introduce different fogging type conditions...misty conditions or foggy conditions.

So, we trained people when the scene was sunny to drive at a certain speed. So, we'd set them off at a speed down the road, which they didn't know what it was and say accelerate or decelerate until you think you're doing 50 mph. And when they were well trained at this and able to do this we then started introducing scenes where it was foggy. And what we found that if it was sunny they would indeed drive at about 50 mph but if it was foggy they then would drive about 70 mph saying to us that that feels like 50 to me."

Dave: And that's bad news for us motorists.

Robert: "Exactly the sort of thing you don't want to do when it's foggy."

We'll have the sorts of things you do want to do when you're driving in the fog, tomorrow right here on The Weather Notebook. Our shows producer is Bryan Sejvar and our engineer is Sean Doucette. If you have any questions about weather, you can call us at 1-888-724-6001 and leave them on our machine. The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory, underwriting is provided by Subaru, the beauty of all wheel drive, with major funding provided by the National Science Foundation.