Phantom Brake Phenomenon in Survivors of Car Accidents
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Survivors of high impact car accidents, when traveling in cars as passengers, may exhibit the phantom brake reaction. The reaction consists of involuntarily pressing the foot on the floor of the car in a reflexive attempt "to brake", even though there is no brake pedal in front of the passenger seat. This study examines the incidence and correlates of this special phenomenon. Method: De-identified data of 114 survivors (37 men, 77 women; mean age 38.6, SD=12.4) of high impact motor vehicle accidents (MVAs) were available, with their responses to the Brief Pain Inventory, Insomnia Severity Index, Rivermead Post-Concussion Symptoms Questionnaire, Subjective Neuropsychological Symptoms Scale (SNPSS), PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5), ratings of depression and of generalized anxiety, and 3 questionnaire measures of driving anxiety, i.e., Whetstone’s, Steiner’s, and the Driving Anxiety Questionnaire (DAQ). One item of the DAQ assesses the phantom brake phenomenon on a 4-point scale (0=No, 1=Mild, 2=Moderate, 3=Severe): this is the key variable in the present study. Results: Mild to severe forms of the phantom brake reaction were reported by 92.1% of the post-MVA patients. Significant correlations (p<0.05, 2-tailed) were found of the intensity of phantom brake reaction to the intensity of post-MVA pain (rs from 0.20 to 0.33), insomnia (r=0.40), the Rivermead post-concussion scale (r=.29), other post-concussive and whiplash symptoms as measured by the SNPSS (r=0.19), depression (r=0.30), generalized anxiety (r=0.32), and to DAQ (r=0.47) and Whetstone’s (r=0.50) measures of driving anxiety. No significant relationships were found of the phantom brake reaction to age and gender. Discussion and Conclusion: The phantom brake reaction was reported by almost all post-MVA patients and can be considered as a part of their post-MVA polytraumatic symptom pattern.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".