They don't block the view, in the same way that the image from your left eye doesn't block the image from your right eye, even though they're overlaid on the same "mental space". Hold up your finger in front of your eyes, and focus on a distant object. You can see two images of the finger, but also see straight through them simultaneously. It's kinda like that.

And it usually doesn't manifest when I'm intensely concentrating on one task (unless deliberately imagining something is part of how I solve the task). At any rate, driving is mostly a system 1 activity, carried out autonomically. In real life, people's thoughts drift all the time when they drive. It's unavoidable and mostly not a big deal.

>How can you even tell if anything you see is real or a product of your imagination?

Because they're on different channels. Like stdout vs stderr.

>I feel like if that's what is actually happening you should see a professional.

Again, most people are like this. You are the one who is unusual. You probably have aphantasia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

It's common for aphantasics to be initially completely incredulous at the concept of mental imagery, so you're not alone here. See this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi...

>Galton gave people some very detailed surveys, and found that some people did have mental imagery and others didn't. The ones who did had simply assumed everyone did, and the ones who didn't had simply assumed everyone didn't, to the point of coming up with absurd justifications for why they were lying or misunderstanding the question. There was a wide spectrum of imaging ability, from about five percent of people with perfect eidetic imagery1 to three percent of people completely unable to form mental images