Why Do We Feel So Thrilled By Speed?

As you ‘floor’ the pedal, there is a sudden spurt of adrenaline in your body, which in turn has many effects: your blood pressure rises instantly, your heartbeat races, your body temperature rises, and you can feel a slight tingling in your limbs. The exhilaration that we get from speeding down the highway in our cars is more or less a modern development. Prior to the invention of automobiles, the speed with which humans could traverse was probably limited to the speed of a horse. Professor Enda Duffy, in his book The Speed Handbook, explains how cars have transformed the human experience and perception towards speed. He argues that automobiles have made us averse to slow speeds, as traveling at high speeds became the new normal in the post-WW2 era.