Driving Scared

At a social gathering, depending upon its nature, you might be quite comfortable having a conversation about the weather with someone you have not met before. You may even speak of a holiday, making comparisons with whatever places the person to your right has mentioned. That would still be within your comfort zone.

At such a gathering, if someone present mentioned they had a fear of injections, would you find that strange? No, that’s fine; you can quite understand that one. You would also excuse someone if they announced they had a fear of going to the dentist.

Scared of heights anyone?

Yep, that’s a regular, although it doesn’t bother you personally, you know many who have such an aversion. Spiders, mice, rats, snakes and even flying. Yep heard of them too, but what do you think the response would be if someone announced they had a fear of driving.

No, we’re not talking of someone who has not yet shed the L–plates, and is fearful of the enormity of the tasks involved to progress to the driving test. We’re talking about someone who has many years driving experience, has always enjoyed life on the road, but now would have an absolute screaming fit of terror if they were to find themselves driving on a motorway. Oh yes, that one is a real conversation stopper!

You have always enjoyed life on the road

There, did you feel that? There it is again, that little urge in you to now find something else to read, because suddenly the initial interest you may have had in this piece has just begun to jade over and now you feel slightly uncomfortable.

Pay Attention, as This is Important

If you don’t read the rest of this article you will miss out on a vital piece of information about a condition that is not only avoided during social conversation, denied by many to be fact, but you will lose an opportunity to learn about something that could easily happen to you!

It is unknown how many people have developed driving phobia or road fear. Due to the very nature of the problem, the truth is very much pushed underground. Therefore, driving phobia is not spoken of openly, as so obscure and shrouded is it in secrecy that most cases will not know of another’s presence – even if that other would be standing next to them.

What kind of people get like this? There’s got to be something weird about them to start with hasn’t there? Ah yes, of course, the answer is simple. It was there all along. They’ve been in a bad car crash and now lost their nerve. That’s why they can’t face driving anymore!

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, how ignorant is that? Like everyone else, you just don’t understand. The people to which this page refers, far from being representatives of an alien species, are normal, everyday, rational, intelligent beings, and as far as being involved is car crashes is concerned, very few have had more than so much as a tail light broken.

In answer to the question of what type of person develops these issues, the truth is it happens to people exactly the same as you. In fact, it could be tomorrow, or the next day, next week or next month, when it could be you who is affected by driving phobia. Frankly, this condition can happen to anyone – just as in the same random way that decides who will catch a common cold virus. It seems to be indiscriminate, certainly non–gender or age specific, but you can protect yourself.

A By–Product of Our Modern Lifestyle

The number of driving anxiety and phobia cases are rapidly increasing, and the condition is very much a by–product of our modern lifestyle. As a species we have perpetuated this in our never tiring quest to achieve perfection in our lives. Probably as far back as the end of the second World War, our expectations in life have rocketed through the roof.

We have become used to getting what we want and when we want it. Not only that, we demand better performance from all that we have, use and see. As the quality of the things around us gets better, all we do is ask for them to be better still.

Faster is never fast enough for long enough

Take your Internet connection, as an example. Remember the old 56k modem? Wasn’t it wonderful when that was launched. Access to the big World Wide Web, but soon there were better connections available and suddenly the old dial–up system was old hat. Even now, with the super–fast Broad Band systems of today, we’re still not satisfied.

We are the same with our cars in our pursuit of faster and better performance. To demonstrate how bad we have become in our demands for satisfaction, we even try to defy the laws of physics in what we expect our products to achieve.

So, What’s This Driving Phobia Thing All About Then?

Well, much of it is all to do with pressure – pressure to fit in, to be something or someone, to measure up, to match with a perceived model of what a person in the year 2010 should be and achieve – and it’s just plain not coping with it.

In the work place, ever–increasing demands are being placed upon the level of performance, the amount of production, sales, targets, statistics and what is expected to be completed in a set amount of time. It is about trying to jump over that high–jump bar that is actually too high, and being expected to be capable of jumping over it. What is extraordinary is that expectations demanded by others to have the bar jumped even higher creates the equal expectation we develop of ourselves to achieve it.

Then there is parenthood, now that’s a pit of rattlesnakes.

To be a parent in this age it isn’t just about having a baby. It is about having the perfect baby, having all the ‘right’ gear to go with it and to bring it up the ‘right’ way. What is the must–have baby buggy? Oh, and what about the shop from where to buy baby clothes.

Hell, we need to move house, as the school in this area scored so poorly in the recent Ofsted report. Got to get his name down for private nursery, and if he has to go to that school, how am I to look Mrs. Jameson in the eye when next in Sainsbury’s? Yes, got to have the right postcode, or we’re doomed.

Everywhere, there is pressure, whether it be actual, virtual, real or perceived. It is there, all the time, and we don’t realise it. We go through life loading ourselves up with all this weight, brick by brick, seemingly with the notion that the more we find we are capable of carrying, the more we can take on board. Let’s face it, who is there reading this page would argue that an invention of a 36–hour day would be a good idea?

One day you are driving on the motorway

You are pushed for time as usual, because just like usual, you have set yourself an unrealistic time frame in which to complete your tasks of the day.

On your mind there are a myriad of pressures. Things that need doing at home, for which there has not been the time. There are those assurances and promises you made to your significant other, your mates, your colleagues and your manager.

Not once did you stop to think about when you will actually be able to find even half the amount of space in your life required to achieve what you were somehow hoping to do. Remember that saying about brooms and backsides? Well, it is your broom, your backside and you who has put the two together – no one else.

You get in your car
and your worries stay outside

How many of you who spend most of their working lives in a car regard it as your protective capsule, your special place within which you are removed from the world at large? The cocoon into which you climb, and no matter what is going on in your life, no matter what the amount of muck and bullets is flying around you in your life, in your car you are safe from it all.

In your car you shut it all out there, switch on your CD player and just have that oh so blissful me–time to yourself. You are, at least for the duration of that journey, at peace with yourself and can re–charge your energy cells ready for the next battle that awaits you at the other end of the motorway.

So, there you are, driving on that motorway, and before long your mind strays from the road and the traffic to perhaps the tense situation at home. It may be the fact your mother, father, sister, brother, or any other one who is close to you, is very ill, or may even have recently passed away. Perhaps it is a financial issue that consumes your thoughts.

As you cover mile upon mile with apparent ease, and to the point of almost being detached from the act driving, you are less in your car and more in your thoughts about your situation. Suddenly, and for no apparent reason, you begin to feel weird. Slight dizziness perhaps. Yes, it doesn’t feel right.

As your breathing becomes laboured your chest begins to ache, and flippin’ heck! Hasn’t it just got very hot in here? Your hands are sweating, making the steering wheel all slippery, and now serious alarm is taking over as your legs don’t seem to want to respond to the rest of your body like they are supposed to. Your arms to go to jelly, so what the hell is going on?

Frantically, You Pull to The Hard Shoulder & Stop The Car

Panting for breath you are bewildered and scared. This has never happened before, and you might be forgiven for thinking you have been taken ill. Okay, so if you sit there a while, have a sip of water or two, everything will be all right. There, that’s better; perhaps it’s okay to carry on now. What an episode, but it’s all over now.

However, as you drive off the hard shoulder and rejoin the main carriageway, and as your speedometer needle hits 40mph, you are again seized with terror. This is ridiculous. Here you are in a 150mph car and now, for some reason, you are feeling like you are going to die if you exceed a fraction of the legal motorway speed limit.

A frustrated trucker bears down on you from behind, hooting angrily and flashing his headlights before swooping out around you and then cutting back in sharply, nearly clipping your front wing. Somehow the car has become affected, seemingly pulling the left, and you wince as your nearside tyres catch the rumble strip between lane–one and hard shoulder.

You feel desperate, breathless, even feverish
as the panic attack takes hold

You crawl along lane–1, scared and bewildered as to what is becoming of you, all the time wanting to stamp on the brake and stop. Eventually, however, you make it off the motorway, and abandoning your day, you strike for home. Yes, that’s what the problem is; you just need a good night’s sleep.

Next day, you wake up feeling relatively good, although not as good as usual. However, you are ready to enter the rat race of life and go through your normal domestic morning routine. You throw your jacket into on the back seat of the car, jump in behind the wheel, satnav on, hands free on, turn the key and you’re off.

Not long down the road and you have the start of the motorway slip road in your sights, but no sooner are you on it than wallop! You are again struck by the mystery virus (that’s what you may think it is) and the same symptoms come back with a vengeance – as experienced the previous day.

Panic Attack
Driving Phobia Response to Driving On a Motorway

What you now have developed is driving phobia, which is now a response to driving on a motorway. To now try to complete a motorway journey will be just about as easy as willingly thrusting your hand into a pan of boiling water. And what do you do about it?

Your response straight away is to conceal it, even from your relationship partner, through fear of being ridiculed, and therefore through embarrassment. You go about your daily business as before, but now you have to get creative. You are going to still get from A to B to C to D in the same day, but you are going to have to do it without touching a motorway.

Now life begins to get miserable, because this is where you begin feeling really stressed. This is not the type of stress you have been thriving on all these months or years. This is bothered stress and it is so draining.

Not long into your new working and travelling regime you have a similar panic attack episode on a dual–carriageway, so now you have to now cross those off your list of usable roads. Slowly and surely the phobia backs you further and further into a corner, and seemingly there is no way out.

Working With Driving Phobia & Road Anxiety Cases

At Ride Drive we deal with a large number of people every people who have experienced a motorway panic attack, or an anxiety episode on any other type of road, and the enquiry rate is ever growing. In fact, we have devoted a whole section of our business to working with driving phobia cases, complete with stand–alone website, and are very successful.

It would take too long to go into all the technical details as to what is going on psychologically, but in basic terms, the condition largely affects those who have high demands upon their own performance. People who perhaps gain pleasure from the cut and thrust of a hectic life schedule, and who have just pushed their expectations of their own ability to cope one notch too far and for too long.

As it has been said at the top of the page, the culture of today is that you have to be a super human being, someone who can cope with all that is thrown at them and more. It is to be a person who has to be what their peers and the world apparently expects them to be. This affliction is a protest, and a protest at you for not being kinder to yourself.

So, what’s the answer to driving phobia?

The problem is easier to prevent than it is to cure, so step back. Take a look at yourself and what you are doing. Back off the demands you are placing upon yourself and get it into your thick head that it is okay to make errors. You are only human, a sophisticated animal in fact, and therefore far from perfect. Therefore, accept you are not perfect.

Think more about how your lifestyle and working practices are affecting you. Take more care of yourself by making sure you always eat a nutritional and regular diet (three meals a day), maintain your body fluids, take regular exercise, as well as make sure you always have plenty of sleep. Learn to relax – yes, it is okay to sit down with a coffee and do nothing for 10–minutes. Oh, and talking of coffee, not too much of that either, and stop drinking so much alcohol, as that won’t help.

Just take care of yourself. Driving phobia takes about 5–seconds to take hold of you, and thereafter, you could be affected by it for the rest of your life!

First Published May 2007

If you have been affected by any of the symptoms described within this article, and you would like to discuss it in complete confidence, call the Ride Drive office now, whereupon you will find complete understanding. Also, visit our driving phobia website to learn more. You don’t have to suffer alone.

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This page was last updated
Saturday, 29-Jan-2011

Driving Phobia, Road Fear and Anxiety