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Freeway Fright: Facing Fears Head-On
July 26, 2000 -- Spend much time in rush-hour traffic? Add a light rainfall, and it's a perfect formula for fear. Erratic drivers, sudden stops, and screeching breaks add up to an accident just waiting to happen. Are the thousands of drivers in your rearview mirror paying attention? A new study sheds light on our freeway fears -- and offers hope for getting over them.
It seems that all people who are so-called "driving fearfuls" have essentially the same anxieties -- whether they have actually had a fender bender -- or worse -- or not, according to the study's author, Frank P. Deane, PhD, a psychologist and researcher at the University of Wollongong in Australia. Their anxieties are very specific, often related to coping with bad-weather conditions and the classic, critical-mouthed "backseat driver."
By getting to the root of those anxieties -- through a bit of therapy -- people can get past some of their worst driving fears, Deane says. Defensive driving courses that boost skill levels also can increase confidence, he adds.
Most research has focused on fears that develop after driving accidents, which has often led to a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in those with more extreme reactions. But focusing on those people may have inadvertently led to a neglect of the larger population of people who fear driving, says Deane.
Through newspapers and radio stations, Deane found 190 people -- 175 women and 15 men -- who were fearful of driving. The people were asked about their driving records, including number of accidents and traffic offenses. They were also asked to describe situations that caused the most anxiety and to rate the severity of their fears on a scale. Finally, they rated their avoidance of those situations.
Seventy-three percent reported having two or fewer accidents. Among the people who had an accident history, 77% reported being nervous before trips, 71% tell the driver what to do, 63% get easily upset in the car, and 58% drive less than they used to.
The top two situations that produced high anxiety -- whether the person had had an accident or not -- were driving alone, especially in fog, and driving with a criticizing person. In fact, 50% of the surveyed drivers avoided the "backseat driver scenario" to some degree more than any other driving situation, researchers found. Nearly 20% reported that because of their fears, they avoided getting a driver's license. Nearly 60% said that their fears interfered with their daily lives to a great extent.
Interestingly, although most people believe that being involved in an accident worsens your fears of driving and driving scenarios, the researchers did not find much difference between levels of fear and the severity of it in people who'd had previous accidents and those who had not.
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