I have never acquired a driver's license, and thus I don't drive myself. For decades I didn't really think much of being in a car as a passenger. However, over time, over the course of a decade or two, I have gained a kind of mild anxiety, a mild phobia, at being in a car. Not so much that it would deter me from being a passenger in a car, but I just can't help but be slightly worried for the entire trip.
There's a couple of reasons for this.
For one, I have seen way, way too many times how careless people are when driving. Sometimes people are so careless as to it being outright scary.
When I'm in the passenger seat, it would be best to not have any conversation with the driver at all. However, that's pretty much in essence impossible. Even if I were to sit there quiet, the driver will invariably strike a conversation.
Why is that a problem? Because it seems to me that apparently there's this extremely strong psychological phenomenon that when you are speaking to someone you absolutely must turn to look at the person you are speaking to. I have experienced that time and time again, with dozens and dozens of people. Can't remember many exceptions. The driver will speak to me, and turn his head to look at me, often for a frighteningly long amount of time. You know, looking at me, rather than the road. Several times I have got literally scared when that has happened, because the driver is literally not looking at the road ahead. I have been literally scared for my life. Several times I have told the driver "please look at the road, not me".
Some drivers are even worse than that. There are people who will turn to look at a passenger in the back seat to talk to them. While driving. I have luckily not experienced it myself but a friend told me that his brother is like that, and several times the car would veer to the right and almost out of the road. I can only imagine how scary that would have been.
And the thing is, even when drivers are looking at the road, they often don't pay much attention. I once asked a friend who was driving "what did that speed limit sign just now say?" He hadn't even noticed the speed limit sign at all. Not only did he not know what the limit was, he hadn't even noticed the sign in the first place.
I have been in a close call once, luckily only a fender bender. A car was stopped near the lane divider, waiting to turn left when oncoming traffic would allow it. The car where I was a passenger didn't notice it soon enough, and the braking distance was too short, and it bumped the car, causing a big dent in both. And what do you know, the reason was that the driver was talking to the person in the passenger seat (I was in the back) and not looking at the road.
My only surprise is how this hasn't happened more often.
And that wasn't even the scariest situation I have been in (although luckily those other situations didn't end up in an accident.)
There is another reason as well: Other drivers.
Even if you are the best driver in the world, you always drive by-the-book, you always follow all traffic laws, you always pay attention and look at the road, you never get distracted, you are always aware of what's happening, you are always aware of all road signs, all other cars on the road and what they are doing, and you are the safest driver in the world, you could still end up in a fatal car accident.
That's because you are not the only person on the road. There are always other people. There are always idiots. You never know when someone going the opposite direction drives too fast, doesn't pay attention, is looking at the passenger while talking to them and not looking at the road. If a car going the opposite direction at 100 km/h suddenly veers in front of you, you'll have 0.1 seconds to react, and you can't. That's a fatal car accident right there, even though you did everything right and drove as carefully and by-the-book as is humanly possible. You just can't avoid it.
And even if every single person on the road drove perfectly and with utter care, you still can't avoid the accidents that nobody could avoid, such as a car blowing a tire or losing control for any other reason, a deer jumping in front of the car, or any of the other myriads of reasons for fatal car accidents that are nobody's fault.
Well over a million people die in car accidents worldwide every single year, and up to 50 million people suffer injuries from car accidents.
And I'm supposed to not feel at least a bit of anxiety when traveling by car? How could I possibly not?
"There's no use in feeling anxious." Yeah, because anxiety listens to reason and logic.
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