Driving fear can affect a day long before you get into the car. You might turn down work, arrange lifts, avoid visiting somebody or choose a much longer route because a particular road feels difficult.

Some people stop driving almost completely. Others continue driving every day but use enormous emotional effort doing so. The distance travelled does not tell the whole story.

The symptoms page explores both the visible restrictions and the less obvious anticipation, monitoring and exhaustion that can surround a journey.

A collision or frightening road incident can change the way driving feels, but there does not have to have been one dramatic event. An unexpected panic response, a long break from driving or gradually avoiding more roads can also become part of the pattern.

The mind may begin predicting what will happen on a motorway or bridge before you reach it. Approaching a slip road can then be enough to trigger the response. Taking another route brings immediate relief while leaving the original prediction largely unchanged.

The causes page looks at both possible beginnings and what now makes a particular journey feel possible or impossible.

Someone who doubts their actual driving skills may need different support from an experienced driver whose main difficulty is panic. A passenger who struggles with handing over control has a different practical goal again.

Treatment should therefore begin by understanding the fear rather than assuming every person needs the same intervention. Therapeutic work can address expectations, imagery and automatic responses while keeping real road safety central. Where practical driving skills genuinely need rebuilding, support from an appropriate driving professional may also be useful.

The treatment page compares the options and explains how our personalised online programme works.

Recovery is about more than completing a journey while feeling tense. It can mean taking the practical route rather than the avoidance route, driving somewhere unfamiliar because there is somewhere you want to go, or reaching a destination without needing the rest of the day to recover from the journey.

You may notice some nerves and still discover that you can think, respond and continue. Driving gradually becomes what it was meant to be: a way of getting somewhere.

The real gain is often what becomes available on the other side, including work, visits, independence, spontaneity and choices that no longer depend on somebody else providing transport.

Can you be confident locally but frightened of motorways? Can driving fear affect passengers too? What if you are mainly frightened of panic? Do you have to drive during an online therapy session?

These are ordinary questions and useful distinctions. The FAQs cover different patterns of driving fear, treatment, our programme and practical concerns about returning to the road.

Driving confidence and driving skill are not the same thing. Someone can know exactly how to drive safely while their automatic response tells them that they cannot cope with a particular road.

Fear while driving and fear as a passenger can also overlap without being identical. The facts page brings those distinctions together so that you can understand and describe your own experience more clearly.