18 July 2023 , 11:59
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When you experience a frightening dream, it's possible you'll feel unsettled for hours after you wake up - especially if you imagined something you're scared of in real life. So it is understandable many of us hate out-of-control car dreams.
It's every driver's worst nightmare, and nobody wants to imagine what they'd do when faced with a horror scenario, like faulty brakes. Unfortunately, car dreams are very common. As Psychology Today explains, in a previous sample of 1,000 dreams, 14.9 percent of responses included the word car. Meanwhile, a man who kept a dream diary between 1984-2014 found 40 percent of all his dreams that involved a car included "car trouble" - despite never experiencing any in waking life.
But the good news for those of us who are troubled by such dreams is that they do not spell out trouble for drivers. In other words, they are not prophetic - and they don't necessarily indicate we're worried about our driving.
On the one hand, you may simply find yourself dreaming about cars more often if you're spending lots of time on the road. Take for instance the man who kept a dream diary. He did not own a car, and it turned out the more he used public transport the more frequently such transportation modes appeared in his dreams in the same period. Meanwhile, he never experienced dreams about construction vehicles, helicopters and the like.
Alternatively, car dreams may signal emotional turbulence, as Michelle Carr PhD explains: "While dreams of cars and driving are sometimes simply related to waking life experiences, for instance, professional truck drivers more often dream of driving, it seems that 'losing control' car dreams are more related to emotional experiences of feeling out of control in waking life."
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Writing for Psychology Today, she adds: "It's interesting that these themes recur in individuals who have never experienced such problems in waking life, and suggests car trouble dreams metaphorically represent waking life stress."