Cervusoffensiophobia
A word we came up with in a thread several months ago to describe my driving fear.
Cervus Latin: deer.
Offensia Latin: to hit.
Phobia Greek: fear
I’m afraid of hitting a deer.
I hate driving. I hated driving so much, I went for years without learning how. How I finally did is another story.
Yeah, I got fears. You betcha.
Accidents. Any kind. Terrfied that any and all vehicles beside me, in front of me, ahead of me, down the road from me, around the corner from me, etc. will total my car, injuring me not enough to kill me, but to paralyze me for life, or smash me through the windshield, horribly disfiguring my face. Then my accident causes a huge multi-car pile-up as well.
Continuing that thought, I’m terrified of of hitting and killing someone else, either in another car or creaming a pedestrian. Or if I don’t kill them, I hurt them badly, ensuring that they or their relatives sue the crap out of me and then I have no money and I end up on the street, all dirty and diseased and smelly.
I’m terrified that as I am driving along the expressway, I will have car trouble and break down and I call AAA but they take a really long time to come and in the meantime a scary dude in a beat-up van stops to “help” me and he and his buddies kidnap me and takes me a to dreary tenement and rape me and get me addicted to IV drugs and I get infected with HIV.
Or I run out of gas or have car trouble and break down and before the scary dude gets there, I get out of my car to see what’s wrong and I get hit trying to fix my car.
Or I stop at a rest stop on the Turnpike and the scary dude is already at the rest stop (having followed me from the Turnpike, when he noticed a young woman ALL ALONE in her car and thought, “yum, yum”), and he watches me get out of my car and go into the rest stop and while I am in there he and his buddies slash my tires and then when I come out and see my now-immobilzed car, the dudes pretend to help me and while they are doing so, lure me close to the van and grab me and throw me in, etc.
Or I take a the wrong exit and go over one of the bridges into the City and get lost in the Bronx and somebody tosses a brick or cinderblock through my windshield and I crash, but am still alive, and then they rape and kill me and strip the car and burn what’s left.
Or it starts to rain, snow, whatever, and I lose control of the car and kill, or am killed.
Or I have a heart attack while I am driving.
Or I choke on my own saliva while I am driving.
Or I have to throw up while I am driving.
Or the wind is gusting really hard one day and blows my poor little car clean off of the Susquehanna River Bridge (Bridge Subject to Windy Conditions).
Or I am driving along right beside a big tractor trailer truck, and its tire or tires blow out on the side I happen to be driving on, throwing chunks of spewing ragged rubber at my windshield, causing me to lose control and crash.
Or somebody decides to nuke NY City just as I am driving by, like maybe right when I get to, say, Newark Airport.
Or maybe one of those planes landing or departing the airport blows up and the pieces rain down hot metallic death onto my car and me.
I have quite a few more, but I think you guys get the idea.
I’m not kidding, either.
ok, i’ll admit it… if i don’t hear from Gunslinger every day part of me gets worried and convinced that he’s wrecked his Nova and killed himself. 
I have many fears, but I don’t know if they’re full on phobias, about driving.
I don’t drive, and never have, for fear of being so damned bad at it I kill somebody within the first month of getting on the road.
Considering I can’t walk down the street without crashing into a tree or tripping on the curb, believe me it’s safer for us all if I just stay away from the driver’s seat.
{b}Creaky**, how on earth do you muster courage to get out of bed in the mornings!
Please, don’t drive. Drivers like you scare me.
Tunnels.
Definitely.
Have no idea why, but I find myself white-knuckling the steering wheel when going through a tunnel.
And, ChiefScott, I grew up in Tidewater. Lived in Hampton and worked in Norfolk. I suppose I took the job to advance my career and for the pay, but I would much rather have stayed on MY side of the tunnel.
I was driving through a tunnel with a girl and honked my horn. Now, perhaps this isn’t a common cultural habit elsewhere, but my dad always did it (said it sounds like a train).
She freaks out, “Stop doing that, what are you doing? Are you crazy?”
Turns out she was afraid the sound of the horn would resonate through the mountain and cause the tunnel to collapse.
Okay, the standard ones:
[li]Breakdown in the middle of the highway.[/li][li]Blown tire in the middle of traffic.[/li][li]Broken down and raped and/or murdered by a “good samaritan”[/li][li]Death by Road rage[/li][li]Filling the tank and finding I have no cash, no credit card, no checkbook, nothing, and I’ll get arrested and hauled off to jail.[/li]
But the worst this that “the little warning voice” is not there when I really need it. Bear with me on this.
I have an internal alarm system. Anytime there is a traffic major problem, a little voice in my head tells me to:
“get out of the lane NOW” just before the car ahead of me drops its entire muffler system (I would have run over it - the car behind me did and tore up its fuel tank badly).
“get in the right hand lane NOW at the stop light” - when I went to accelerate, the timing belt had snapped, and I would have been stranded in the middle lane in rush hour traffic.
“pull onto the shoulder NOW” just before a dog jumped out of the back of a pickup truck ahead of me.
“THAT CAR IS NOT GOING TO STOP FOR THE STOP SIGN” just as I was pulling into the intersection (I had the right of way). I managed to stop, and he hit the fender of the car, rather than t-boning me had I not heard the little voice.
I need my little voice.
Darn Cheif! beat me to it.
My fears (irrational and normal):
[ul]
[li]Cops (I tend to drive over the speed limit just a little ;))[/li]
[li]Drivers that aren’t paying attention around me.[/li]
Objects on the roadway while driving at nite.[/ul]
It does take a lot of guts for me some mornings to get up and get in the car. But I’ll tell ya, I used to be worse. I’ve actually gotten better. I’m hoping that the more I practice, the better I’ll get.
In the meantime, the only thing I may be able to do for you all, the next time I make a long distance drive, is tell you where I’m going so that if I’m headed to your area, you have fair warning !!
Jeannie, it’s quite rational to do that. It doesn’t have to be a bomb in there: the same kind of people who throw bricks off overpasses might also drop a cinderblock in a Hefty bag out of their car on the freeway.
screech-owl: Dang! I want a Little Voice!
I had to drive to Terminal Island once for a job. (Near San Pedro, just south of LA. The docks, in other words.) Anyway, I had to be there at 6 am, and the sunrise was at the halfway point when I approached the bridge to the island. So I see this enormous, serpentine structure, miles high, looming up ahead of me, stark black against the rosy sky. If I hadn’t been transporting co-workers, I would have turned back.
I’m not irrational when I drive, I prefer to think of my paranoia as a survival instinct.