For example, the physical symptoms might involve increased perspiration or tachycardia (pathologically accelerated heart rate), or hyperventilation.
On the cognitive level, the patient may experience a loss of sense of reality, or thoughts of losing control while driving, even in situations that are reasonably safe.
This unintended behavior usually occurs in skilled drivers when they are seated as a passenger next to a less competent person who drives the vehicle as a reflexive response to potentially dangerous traffic situations.
[5] The majority of survivors of serious car collisions tend to experience only the phobia of driving, but they often report generalized anxiety as a part of their post-traumatic adjustment disorder.
The PTSD symptoms, e.g., in the forms of flashbacks such as intrusive images of a bleeding person injured in the same car crash, may also contribute to amaxophobia.
Beck and Coffey reported that 25–33% of people involved in a car collision associated with injuries and related evaluation in a hospital experience subsequent fear of driving.
[8] Hickling and Blanchard[13] and Kuch, Swinson, and Kirby[14] found higher rates of driving phobia, ranging from 42% to 77%.