A Story of Road Anxiety

The following take is an actual personal account of the author.

“I am 38–years of age and have been driving since I was eighteen. When I was fifteen, my parents were involved in a major road collision in which they were both critically injured. Such was the extent of the injuries the hospital doctor prepared me, my sister and other members of the family to expect the very worst.

It was an extremely stressful time for me. Extended members of the family looked after us, trying to conceal their own worries to help us through what was a very difficult period. Eventually, and after much time in hospital, my parents pulled through and were later able to resume their normal way of life.

I soon got over it all, or so I thought, and life went on with the details of that period being spoken of less and less. I did not display any symptoms of being affected by this traumatic period and just got on with my life.

About a year ago I was involved in a very minor road collision where I was hit from behind on a roundabout by a driver who thought I had pulled away from the junction. I was not injured, apart from some minor neck strain, but since that time I developed heightened levels of anxiety whilst driving.

I first noticed it when driving on motorways where I found I was becoming quite stressed. Over a period of time it became worse, with my feet on the pedals seemingly wanting to work independently of the rest of my body. I felt that I would involuntarily swerve across the carriageway into other vehicles, or just run off the side of the road. I tried to tell myself that I was being stupid and to get a grip, but found this merely created more stress and was making me worse.

To try and resolve the situation I gave up driving on motorways, but quickly found that the symptoms came out when using dual carriageways. From there it spread to large trunk roads and then any road that I drove along. My fear was that a car may lunge out of a junction and hit me and I became very sensitive to the movement of other vehicles, not trusting them to stay in their own lanes. I also started having intrusive thoughts of forgetting how to drive, and to partially lose coordination in operating the driving controls.

What started as just short periods of anxious thoughts, that I assumed would pass, developed into feelings of high anxiety whilst driving that have become longer in duration and more intense. Driving long distances used to be quite relaxing, but now I have trouble driving at all, because it just feels too fast and too stressful. I end up feeling like I will lose control of the car any moment. Night driving is also difficult, which I put down to the restricted vision, making me feel even worse about myself.

The symptoms have added a lot of stress to my every day life pattern. I put a lot of pressure on myself to achieve my high expectations of being able to drive normally. The stress of my driving issues seems to have now reached an all time high and to the point where I have experienced such severe panic attacks that I have had to pull over, sometimes just barely being able to make it home.

I now get someone else to drive for me, but I desperately want to eradicate this fear that seems to have taken over my whole life. All I want to be able to do is to simply drive to work!

Please can you help? ”

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This page was last updated
Sunday, 07-Feb-2010

Supporting People With Road Anxiety & Driving Phobia