I could feel my heart beating faster as I climbed behind the wheel of my mother’s car, trying to psych myself up for a three-hour drive from a rented cottage in Huntsville, Ont., back to my home in Toronto.
I had driven the day before – a short jaunt into town for lunch – but before that, it had been more than six months since my last car journey. Driving is something I’ve always actively avoided because I’m not particularly good at it. Though I took a defensive driving course and got my licence many years ago, driving makes me nervous.
My sister drove us to the cottage, but wanted to stay a few extra days so it was just my mom and me driving home. Unfortunately for me, my mom is an anxious driver too. That’s why I found myself behind the wheel, with my mom next to me in the passenger seat. I didn’t like it at all.
Though we made it home safely, the journey was incredibly stressful and had me on the brink of a meltdown several times. I decided I never wanted to feel that way again. So I resolved to talk to the experts.
I haven’t been a regular driver for decades, since my teenage years in the suburbs, driving to high school and my part-time job at the mall. Once I left home for university, I’ve always lived in cities with public transit and never needed a car.
This lack of regularity fuels my anxiety, says Kathleen Barnes, clinic co-ordinator at DriveAgain – Driver Rehabilitation Services, a service based in Toronto and Burlington, Ont., that offers customized assessments of people’s driving skills, as well as hands-on training and rehabilitation programs for older adults, and people with brain injuries and disabilities, to help them regain their independence. It also helps drivers such as myself to build their confidence when they already know how to drive defensively, but feel nervous behind the wheel.
Barnes says she’s seen my flavour of driving anxiety – bred from infrequency and inexperience – increase since the pandemic began.
“People, for various reasons, are not purchasing vehicles because it may be cost prohibitive or their environment doesn’t dictate the need [to own a car] for daily use,” she says. Instead, more people are relying on car sharing and rental services for occasional driving needs. “If a person is only driving intermittently, they’re not developing that skill.”
Data from Turo, an Airbnb-like car-sharing marketplace, shows that the use of car-sharing services increased to 9 per cent from 7 per cent between 2021 and 2023. In 2021, more than half of car owners said they were using their cars less frequently because of the pandemic. Cities are also shifting away from car-centric urban design. In December 2021, the City of Toronto removed requirements for developers to build a minimum number of parking spaces in new buildings while also limiting the number of parking spaces that can be built.
Barnes works with occasional drivers like myself to increase their confidence. Many are going through a life change requiring them to drive more often, such as having a child or moving to an area without access to convenient or reliable public transit. The first step Barnes takes is to reassure nervous drivers that their concerns are valid. “Nobody in their situation, that has a lack of experience and exposure, is going to feel good about it,” she says. “Feeling badly about driving is normal if you don’t have that skill set.”
Anxious drivers, according to Barnes, can have somatic responses to driving, as I do. “They develop panic-like reactions,” she says. “Their heart pounds. Their hands are sweaty. Their breathing is affected.”
Debbie Leung, a registered psychologist and clinical director of the Vancouver-based counselling clinic Wise Mind Centre, says that mindful relaxation is a good activity for anxious drivers to do, even before they get behind the wheel.
“Notice your breathing and physiological responses,” Leung says. “Don’t judge yourself. Know that it’s your anxiety talking. Notice if your heart is pounding, if you’re sweating, if you have a lot of muscle tension, if you’re holding your breath.”
To relax, Leung recommends deep belly breathing to calm one’s nerves, slowly breathing in through the nose to expand the lower stomach (not the chest), then breathing out through pursed lips.
Leung also suggests working your way up a “fear hierarchy” of driving – ranking “tasks” or types of drives from the least to most anxiety-inducing and gradually tackling them. For example, a 10-minute drive on country roads or through a quiet suburb might rate 20 out of 100 for me, while highway driving in off-peak hours would be a 50, and rush hour in downtown Toronto would be a 90.
A practice drive through the quiet streets of Huntsville was a wise decision, prior to my three-hour journey home, Leung says. But I should have worked my way up with more drives in between, instead of going from 20 to 90, so to speak.
“We call [taking increasingly challenging practice drives] a corrective experience, because what you anticipated would happen didn’t happen,” Leung says. “You need to build up your approach to this fear object so you can collect new data to say: ‘See, I managed it okay.’”
Another way I could have lessened the mental load of my longer drive was to take a break. “If you can drive for 15 minutes, but after that, you’re fried and overloaded, then stop and grab a coffee, call a friend or listen to music to decompress,” Barnes says.
She reminds me that letting go of worries I’ve developed over the years doesn’t happen overnight. “You have to have some patience,” she says. “It’ll take a bit of time to change up that internal dialogue or narrative.”
With this new advice in mind, I realize that I shouldn’t be waiting until I need to drive, which only happens once or twice a year. I have to find more reasons to get behind the wheel. So the next time my mom picks me up to go over to my sister’s place for the afternoon, I ask her whether I can do the drive instead. As I take us toward the highway, I inhale with slow, deep breaths, relaxing the tension in my shoulders and loosening my grip on the steering wheel.
Unexpectedly, the ramp we usually take to get on the highway is closed, so I think on the fly and continue to the next entry point 10 minutes away. There’s a lot of traffic, so we’re running late. But our family meetup isn’t time-sensitive, making this a good choice for a practice drive.
Over all, I feel relaxed in the driver’s seat as my mom and I chat about our plans for the weekend. We arrive safely at my sister’s place, despite the last-minute change to our route. Pulling the key out of the ignition, a reassuring thought comes to my mind: “See, I managed that okay.”
Andrea Yu