Fear of Driving

Why the reported rates vary so widely

Beck and Coffey reported that between twenty-five and thirty-three per cent of people involved in a collision that caused injury and required hospital assessment went on to fear driving. Hickling and Blanchard, and separately Kuch, Swinson and Kirby, found higher rates again, from forty-two to seventy-seven per cent.

A range from a quarter to three quarters is not a measurement so much as an indication that the question was asked differently each time. What it establishes is direction rather than magnitude: a serious crash frequently produces this fear, and no other phobia in this catalogue has a cause that reliable.

What phantom brake syndrome reveals

The material names a symptom that exists nowhere else in the phobia literature. Phantom brake syndrome is the passenger pressing a foot to the floor of the car in an involuntary attempt to brake. It occurs in skilled drivers sitting beside a less competent one, and it is particularly common in survivors of serious collisions.

It is worth separating from the fear it accompanies, because it is a motor reflex rather than an avoidance behaviour, and it reveals what the person's body is doing while they sit still and say nothing.

Why drivers rate themselves as safe

Most experienced drivers who develop this fear after a serious collision rate themselves as safer drivers than average. They are not avoiding driving because they distrust their competence; they describe themselves as physically and emotionally too uncomfortable to do it.

That is a very different complaint from the one the questionnaires expect, and it shows up in the instruments. The Driving Cognition Questionnaire includes items about how the person will be judged, such as whether people will think they are a bad driver, and those self-image concerns are described as relatively uncommon in post-crash patients, many of whom drove for decades without incident or discomfort.

Which parts of the road do it

The trigger scales with the situation for some people, so motorway driving and dense traffic provoke more than quiet roads, and proximity to lorries and buses is named specifically. For others it does not scale at all: sitting in the car is enough, or thinking about a journey in the near future.

Driving alone intensifies it, and the reasons given are practical rather than psychological: breakdown, isolation, nobody to help, which is the agoraphobic question in another setting. It worsens at night.

The maintaining factors after a crash are also physical. Persistent pain, insomnia caused by that pain, and continuing post-concussion and whiplash symptoms all keep the fear in place, which means some of what looks like a psychological condition is being sustained by an injury.

What the driving instruments miss

Three twenty-item instruments are in use:

• the Driving Behavior Survey, rating items such as trouble staying in the correct lane on a one-to-seven scale
• the Driving Cognition Questionnaire, on a zero-to-four scale, including the social-evaluation items above
• the Driving and Riding Avoidance Scale, describing situations in which driving is avoided

Taylor and Sullman make a point about the third that applies to a great deal of phobia measurement: its items are worded so that avoidance can be reported for reasons that have nothing to do with fear. Taking the underground in a large city is faster than driving and saves fuel and parking, and a person who does so scores as avoidant.

Almost nothing is known about how common it is

The material says so directly: little is known about the prevalence of driving anxiety. The single figure available is that sixteen per cent of New Zealand adults report moderate to severe driving anxiety, which is one country and one study.

The names are also unsettled. Driving phobia, driving anxiety, vehophobia, amaxophobia and driving-related fear all appear in the same opening sentence, which is what a term looks like before any one usage has won.