I have this recurring nightmare…or at least the theme and the circumstances repeat themselves. Maybe not the exact details…but the set/plot twist/characters are always the same. I’m driving or riding in a car that goes off a bridge or a cliff. I always have a moment to contemplate my impending death, as if the fall happens in slow motion. I know something like this could happen, but this is why I class this as a nightmare. I would never wish this upon myself of my worst enemy. Even thinking about it is scary, so imagine going through it! I know that car accidents are no rare occurrence in cities like Houston which is really sad. Maybe it would be a good idea to read up on some law just in case I end up in a car crash. My friend told me that she learned a lot from New Jersey Lemon Law and their website, maybe I’ll check it out but I digress.
Those two elements are the same. Car falling. Me acknowledging my impending death. There are other more terrifying elements that vary. For example, who is in the car. Most of the time it’s one or all of my kids. If we’re heading towards water (often we’re just heading towards a rocky/land surface) I have to then consider if the impact will kill us or of I’ll be able to try to save my kids. Two nights ago I had a DOOZY. Donnie was driving this time (which is rare, usually I’m driving or a stranger, I trust Donnie’s driving empirically so he’s rarely driving) and Nikki and Wes were in the backseat. We were heading off of a water-logged bridge and heading towards a calm-water surface. In the slow-motion fall I recognized we might die and that it wasn’t a dream. (There’s always are part of me that recognizes this is a situation I’ve dreamed about before, and I always wish THIS ONE TIME was not real.) I screamed out, “I love you guys so much!” so they would hear that one more time before they died. If they died. Because I always knew I might be able to save one if we hit the water soft enough. Not both, I didn’t think I could save both, but I’d have to save one. And in that slow-motion fall to my possible death I vividly remembering trying to come up with a plan to help them both escape, but knowing Wes would need more help and wondering if I could do it. If me and my crappy swimming abilities could at all save either of my kids. It was AWFUL. I’m tearing up a bit just reliving it. I tweeted about it.
My driving anxieties manifest themselves in vivid nightmares of my family involved in car crashes. Last night’s was a doozy.
Zoot (@misszoot) December 4, 2013
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js And it turns out? I’m not the only one with wacko repeat Dying In A Car Crash dreams! Some people discussed having the Breaks Won’t Work dream. Others find themselves in the passenger seat, unable to control the vehicle. It was crazy. Several people admitting to similar dreams so I thought I have to know…how common is this? I am completely aware that situations like these do happen, which is why I find it scary every time I have dreams like these. If you are reading this and you know of anyone who has recently been involved in a car crash, you may want to point them in the direction to visit site and get in touch with a professional car accident lawyer, as they will be able to assist them in tackling the legal side of it all and hopefully get the best results from it. I assumed my dreams were connected to my driving anxieties. I’m not sure which was first – the dreams or the driving stress – but I know they’re connected. When a driving situation is bad, traffic is bad, weather is bad, or ESPECIALLY if I have to drive over a bridge…I relive the fear from all of my past dreams. I avoid stressful driving situations for those very reasons. I don’t take left turns unless it’s controlled or there’s minimal traffic. I avoid bad interchanges at anything but odd low-traffic hours. I avoid the interstate. There’s a running group I sometimes meet. I could get to them in 25 minutes if I took the normal route but we meet after work so I take one of my routes and it takes me almost 45 minutes. Just to avoid the interstate and the interchanges during rush hour. So…Do you have the nightmares? And do they haunt you? (I could NOT shake that nasty feeling all day yesterday. Put me in a bad mood.) Do they affect your driving or – are you like me – and do you assume your driving anxieties create the nightmares? I posted that on Twitter yesterday and was AMAZED by how many people said, “ME TOO!”
Me too. The thing that haunts me most is choosing which kid to save…
I’ve had car wreck dreams since before I was old enough to drive. I can’t remember if they started before I was actually in one (7 years old), but I think they did. Earliest dreams involved me needing to get help for someone and needing to drive to do it, then wrecking the car. Then I had all kinds of driving off a cliff dreams, with the slow-mo falls, or driving down a highway and up a hill and then going airborne and falling… again, goes to slow-mo then. No fun.
when i was taking the bar exam, i had these horrible nightmares where i would drive off bridges– every single night for about 2-3 months. i was always driving and the only variable was whether or not my mom was in the passenger seat. it’s been almost 10-15 years since these dreams and yet i STILL AM TERRIFIED OF DRIVING OVER BRIDGES as a result. i practically have a panic attack whenever i see one. it was that slow motion thing you described– i could feel us going off the bridge and the fall down. ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE. before that, i just had dreams about people chasing me all the time (vampires! people with guns! etc)
so yes. very bad dreams consistently for years, although they’ve gotten better. i had to stop watching the walking dead b/c it was too much like my nightmares of people chasing me– and my husband made me stop (me clutching him in the middle of the night yelling “THEY’RE ALL GOING TO EAT US” did it, i think).
I always thought that dream was about lack of control, or not feeling in control of one’s life. My version of the dream is sitting in the backseat, no one is driving the car, but it’s careening out of control and I can’t reach the steering wheel in time.
yes. I have the crash dreams, or more often, dreams in which I am going SLIGHTLY too fast, and I know I am, but I can’t slow down, so I have to navigate the roads going too fast. I always realize that a crash is SECONDS away from happening, and I am always mad at myself for letting myself get to this “slightly too fast” speed. Sometimes the dream ends before I crash, sometimes not… horrible dreams!
Not driving, but really vivid nightmares of a variety of situations. Sometimes it’s stress related (and then it’s almost always about work, even though I left my job 2 1/2 years ago), but more often than not it happens during a hormone flux. Because nasty PMS isn’t enough without nightmares, too. Thankfully, they almost never involve my kid… Knock wood.
That sounds scary. Even though I’ve been in a couple of scary accidents (not as scary as plunging into water), I don’t think I’ve ever dreamed about a car accident.
My most frequently recurring dream is a variation of me really having to go to the bathroom, but not being able to find a place to go. Anyone have that one?!?
I used to frequently have a dream where all my teeth would fall out. They wouldn’t break or anything, they would just fall out completely whole. So weird, apparently it’s a really common anxiety dream though. Before I could drive I had lots of dreams where I was driving and it was terrifying because I DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO DRIVE!!! Ha…
i’ve been having that dream since i was about 13 (worrying about saving my little sister if the car went off a bridge while we were drving to key west…that was the first time i had it. the next year we went to key west again, got in an accident and the car we were in was totalled, but we weren’t on a bridge). i still have versions of that dream all the time, and it still ruins my day.
My one usually involves falling down the stairs, we have a tiled floor at the bottom and having done it from about half way down and jarring all my back, and sitting on the tile floor working out if I could actually get up again (only one in the house of course!!) sometimes I dream about it.
It’s currently moved to falling down the stairs at work and then lying there waiting for a first aider or someone to come and rescue me because although I made a lot of noise no one has noticed that I’ve done it. There are also extra bits to the dream that have crept in recently and so part of me says a quick prayer when I wake up that I do not fall down the stairs today!
I don’t usually have nightmares that I remember, but I have nightmarish daydreams just like the ones you described, and I fixate on them and cannot stop. My driving habits totally changed when I stared commuting with my kids in the car (because their daycare was near my work). My commute route goes through this long, narrow canyon, where the road is down next to the river. It is beautiful, but I’m always convinced that during a heavy rain it will flash flood and wash away all the cars. Every time it rains, I take an alternate route, and spend the whole time thinking about how I would never be able to save both kids (and the resulting terrible thoughts about which one to save). My anxiety has gone way down since my older daughter started school near our house, because now I figure I could totally save one kid, right? Well, not likely, but at least I wouldn’t have to choose between them. That’s the part that’s almost worse than drowning.
So yeah, your nightmares are totally normal.