It's possible because the road you're driving is an abstraction that eliminates so much information. While you're running through the woods, you have to see an

It's possible because the road you're driving is an abstraction that eliminates so much information. While you're running through the woods, you have to see and account for every rock and root or you trip, fall, and get literally eaten alive. While driving on a road, you don't need to consider the road itself at all, really. That's the technology of roads - removing all obstacles to travel. A road is literally an empty, smooth space. So now you only need to consider traffic, turns, and distance. I'm not surprised at all that our brains that can probably remember the locations of every fruiting bush and tree in our territory can efficiently encode some turns.