Roadway Phobias
Often people with an irrational fear of driving will try to pinpoint and isolate a reason for their phobia. This is easy enough to do if one has been in a horrific accident or some sort of dangerous situation while driving. In those cases, however, it is frequently a sign of post-traumatic stress disorder. That, of course, doesn’t make the fear of driving any easier to deal with but people often feel slightly better when they can point to a specific cause.
It’s much harder for both sufferers and those who are in their lives when there is nothing they can point to as a cause. For many people, that’s exactly what happens. They just gradually get more and more fearful. For some, it begins with an occasional rise in anxiety while driving, perhaps while stuck in traffic or while driving under stressful conditions such as during a snowstorm. The episodes may be mild at first but as time goes on, the anxiety level increases, you can read more here.
Frequently, there will come a point where a person with this causeless fear of driving will have a full-blown panic attack while driving. Anyone who has suffered through a panic attack can tell you just how scary the event can be. The emergency rooms across the country see people who think they are having heart attacks but actually had their first panic attack. The anxiety caused by thinking they might have a panic attack leads to avoiding driving which eventually can turn into a phobia.
This type of slow rise of fear of driving is not only hard for the sufferer to understand, it’s compounded by the well-meaning people in their lives who think the person can just “get over it”.