Eidetic imagery may assist reflective arousal to achieve a semantic level of decoding.
It was probably the process of Eidetic imagery (which we will talk about later) that flashed the image back to his consciousness.
This time it was fully decoded with all its meaning--("I believe that was a red light I just went through!"), but not until the car had gone totally through the intersection.
Then, of course, he was all of a sudden aware of what I (whoops--he) did.
It followed, that at the subliminal level of awareness he sensed there was something behind him. Upon investing further energy to raise his arousal level, he recognized the flashing red light of a police car behind.
Semantic Level of Arousal : When you look at something and have the "I know what it is" feeling (like recognizing a policeman's flashing red light), you are functioning at the Semantic Level of awareness.