What Is Your Worst Driving Fear? Autopian Asks

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Humans are fun, quirky creatures filled to the brim with eccentricities. Even “normal” folks, which I’m sure don’t work here, have something about them that makes them different. It’s what makes the human condition so exciting! Perhaps not as fun is fear. Some people can’t be in the same room as a spider while others may desire to keep a long distance from a tiny space. I get it. What about fears related to cars and driving? What’s something you try to avoid at all costs?

I like to think of myself as a bit of a daredevil. I’m almost equally fascinated with the idea of jumping out of a perfectly good plane as I am with being the person to fly it. I never rode a snowmobile before January, yet I wasn’t even 5 minutes into my first time on a Ski-Doo when I had the throttle pinned and the speedometer climbing. It was the same deal just last weekend when BRP tossed me the key to a 325 HP Sea-Doo. I’ve never been on a PWC before, but you bet I was chuckling like a Bond villain as I skipped across chop at grand speeds. I had never been on a paved track before Harley-Davidson asked me to send a bagger around corners at speed.

Yet, even I have driving fears. There’s one thing in particular that I do not want to leave to chance and that’s a crash involving a body of water. Somewhere around 400 people drown each year after a crash that eventually sees their vehicles getting submerged in water. A paper published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration states that most water-based fatalities happen after a vehicle rolls over into water. Another large chunk is when a vehicle crashes into another vehicle before entering water.

The subject of escaping from a sinking vehicle has been one I’ve been obsessed with since I was a kid. As my bio says, I love water, so it’s probably expected that I’d apply the same obsession to vehicles. In the past, I spoke with a local fire department about what to do should one find oneself in a submerging car, and their recommendation was to remove your seatbelt and open all windows immediately upon entering water. The most important thing to act quickly, which might be difficult if you’re disoriented or upside down. Another reason to be quick: water may foul power-window electronics. It sounds like an expert interviewed by NPR agrees.

If you cannot open a window or a door, there are glass breaker tools designed to slash your seatbelt and break a window to enable a quick escape. Some may recommend removing a headrest and slamming its posts into a window, but it may not do the job. It also should be noted that glass-breaker tools do not work on today’s fancy cars with laminated side glass. One of these days I’m going to test a bunch of these tools in a junkyard …

In a very worst-case scenario, I’ve been told it’s possible to wait for the vehicle to fill up before exiting. I’m sure so many of you have seen the famous Mythbusters segment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YaMEW30bv4

Of course, waiting for the car to fill should always be the last resort after all other options have been exhausted. My wife has a fear of water and cannot swim. So, a crash involving water becomes that much more difficult.

That’s my driving fear. The idea of saving myself, my wife, and maybe any onboard pets sounds daunting, but I’m prepared for it.

What about you? What is your driving fear?

Topshot: screen grab, youtube.com/@discovery

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102 thoughts on “What Is Your Worst Driving Fear? Autopian Asks”

  2. Really any sort of collision with my kids in the car. But yeah, add water to that and…

    I’m gonna choose to sleep tonight versus read all the comments like I normally would.

  4. My greatest car fear? Being stuck forever driving (or worse, being auto driven) in a dull, soulless, amorphous appliance marketed by a sociopath bent on world domination.

  5. Sliding down the road, upside-down, in a convertible. The reason why I don’t ever plan on owning one. Sometimes, it’s not always the answer. Fears don’t need to be rational.

    3. Been there, three cars and none operable. Start working on one, run into an issue that will take a long time, throw up hands and move over to try to get another one working.
      Fun times!

  7. I think it’s great that after 8 years, everybody STILL knows who Mythbusters were.

    Anyway, my biggest driving fear is being mutilated by a semi-truck while driving my ’98 Honda Civic Coupe. (drowning is in there too though)

  9. As has been said already… Other Drivers.

    That other driver might be in my car too (if I’m a passenger with one of my teens).

    But mostly it’s people who aren’t paying attention when I’m in my MG. Sometimes those people are driving trucks with tires that are higher than the top of my door. I added a 3rd brake light on my roll bar after nearly being rear ended turning into my driveway.

    I also have fears of not seeing pedestrians or bikes on the sidewalks. I’m really careful, especially since I live on a main road with sidewalks and there are a lot of people always crossing the sidewalk in my driveway. With e-bikes now, some of them come up really fast on you (they aren’t supposed to be on the side walk, but they always are).

  10. I have a recurring nightmare where I’m driving on an expressway, and someone/something shuts off all the lights on my car as well as the roadlights, and I can’t slow down or see anything. Basically blind at full speed while having the car under control but also knowing a crash is inevitable. Not a fun dream.

  11. I live in the city and I’m always afraid of people turning left in front of me as I approach an intersection. Also, driving the expressway on the weekend at night when people are driving particularly recklessly.

    1. I’ve been rear-ended stopping for that unprotected left someone took in front of me. I’ve also had someone nearly T-bone me deciding to make a U-turn from a lane to the right of me…when neither one was a turn lane and the intersection was clearly marked as not allowing U-turns or lefts. I’m with you on other people being a potential problem.

          1. Oh I’d never. I grew up on a lot of New Wave/assorted 80s alternative. REM, the Police, the Cars, Talking Heads, etc. were constantly on rotation in Nsane household. I still love all of it dearly to this day, and eventually found my way into the classic goth stuff as well.

    2. Even with LPRs, SCMODS, and menacingly blacked-out SUVs, police today are pussycats compared to the 70s and 80s. Back then I’d get pulled over for even the most trivial of infractions, like “driving a beater” and “being a teenager”. Now I pass a parked one doing 20 over and they don’t even look up from their phones.
      Of course, black and hispanic drivers probably don’t agree, and that’s understandable.

  13. I have a nightmare sometimes about missing a turn and my car goes flying into a river/lake/ocean. I end up outside the car, watching it fall and sink. I guess I’m afraid of losing my vehicle more than being trapped in it?

    Actually driving, my biggest fear is probably hitting a pedestrian or cyclist. I get really stressed out when people drive through the crosswalk when a pedestrian is still close to their lane or blow through as someone’s trying to step out. And there’s a little lingering fear someone will rear-end me into a pedestrian while I wait for them to cross.

  14. Getting rear ended by one of the many large pickup trucks/ dump trucks/ semis that tend to speed and tailgate excessively on the rural highways around where I live, especially with a 3 year old in the back seat. We’ve had some very close calls in the last couple years, such as the HD pickup towing a trailer recently who had to swerve onto the shoulder to avoid hitting us when I stopped for a school bus on a 65mph highway.

  15. I am terrified of hitting a pedestrian. I go particularly slow in residential neighborhoods, parking lots, the obvious places this is a higher risk…but there’s always a chance some drunk wanders out onto a highway and I tag him at 75 MPH. Killing someone with a car just feels like it would end me, in many ways.

    1. My dad narrowly avoided hitting a woman who was trying to commit suicide by jumping out in front of his log truck. Even though he didn’t hit her, that messed him up.

      He also had a motorcyclist tip over into the front of the truck as they met in a corner…they think the guy had sudden cardiac arrest and may have been dead before he hit, but he still wouldn’t even drive his pickup for at least a month over that one.

      I think I’d be finding a non-driving career after either of those incidents.

      1. Yeah, killing someone in an accident, whether my fault or not, is probably my #1 answer to this question, narrowly beating out “spider drops from headliner”.

        1. I’ve had a spider drop from the headliner. It was not pleasant, but I was able to safely pull to the side of the road, leap from the car, and throw the spider out. I keep expecting to experience it again in my pickup. Especially after I had a bunch of baby spiders on a tire a month or so ago. Luckily, I think they were black widows, and they tend to stay put once they find a spot.

          But, yeah, spider from the headliner is no fun.

          1. I have actually experienced that too, and narrowly managed to avoid driving the car into the nearest solid object then setting it on fire just to be safe. My fear of spiders is 100% irrational and 110% real.

            1. As a bit of an arachnophobe, I really appreciate spiders that stay put. A cat-faced spider is even better, being less hazardous, but a widow is pretty safe if you don’t mess with it. A hobo spider or the like are far too mobile for my taste.

      2. On a happier note my late Grampa used to drive logging Trucks, someone else in a logging truck lost his brakes going down a hill, so my Grampa got in front of him, and used his brakes to slow him down.

        Idk why I shared, but it seemed like this thread needed a little positivity.

  16. Blind hills & blind corners – perfect places for somebody to decide to deviate from their lane and ruin your day right hard. Or – even more frightening – find a cyclist hidden in the blind of the hill on the rolling county road with no shoulders. Car-to-car, at least we both have airbags and stuff, so we’ll probably come out alive. That cyclist, though… that scares the crap out of me (especially since I started cycling myself).

    1. It’s interesting how much my own personal choices (becoming a motorcyclist, becoming a road/gravel bicycle guy…) have shifted my general worries now that I’m really AWARE of the risks there.

    2. I concur! I live in a part of
      Texas with a decent amount of hills. There are some scary blind bends on some of the hilly country roads.

    1. That’s my worry when I drive in Upstate NY at night. Windy roads and trees on both sides for long stretches. If a car is coming into my lane where the hell am I supposed to go?

    2. Knowing the stupid things I did in my 30s when I got my first high powered sports car I’m not sure I could even do that. Hitting a deer at 60 mph on a back road mellowed me out quite a bit, but I can’t really recommend it as a teaching tool. 😉

    2. I will do you one better. I got rear ended at a red light, got the car back and had it happen again within less than a week, and then 6 months later a Ram BACKED into me at a red light and totaled my car. Although I did buy it back and repair it.

      1. I got rear-ended because someone took an unprotected left in front of me. I was able to stop, but the car behind me didn’t get the memo. I scheduled the repairs and someone backed into my rear quarter panel as I was driving through a parking lot before I got the car into the shop.

        Real interesting conversation explaining which damage was going to be billed to which insurance. I think they asked two or three times which one was my insurance, and neither one was.

      1. Saw my first one last week, and my initial reaction was that the design might work much better as a hatchback car (the one I saw had the bed cover up). As a truck, the proportions seem off for the styling.

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