[codetrotter]

I’ve had a few lucid dreams. The first couple of times were after making a habit of counting my fingers. In real life you always have the correct number. When dreaming it might be an incorrect or seemingly indeterminate amount of fingers.

So at that moment I would realize I was dreaming. But I don’t see why you’d just jump off of a bridge neither in a dream nor IRL. Personally what I chose to do was to attempt to fly by imagining jet motors on my legs. And it worked! And then I got excited and woke up :P

Anyway, when you become lucid it is because of things that are not like reality, so it will be obvious that it really is a dream. I see your concern but I could never imagine anyone thinking they were dreaming when they were not.

Another couple of times I’ve realized I was dreaming because the text in books or in papers were a jumbled floating mess rather than the static arrangement of letters that one would expect, and no information was conveyed as opposed to real life where most books and magazines are written to present some form of information in writing.

And one time I had a nightmare where my fingers and hands got holes in them and something was coming for me and I said “this is not possible”, and I realized then that I was dreaming and I took control and turned the nightmare into a pleasant dream by projecting the disease over on my assailant and escaping from it :)