For decades, women have been encouraged to embrace the freedom of the open road, yet for a significant cohort reaching their 40s, 50s and beyond, the motorway has become a psychological barrier as formidable as any physical obstacle.
The very thought of the fast lane, of overtaking a large lorry or being caught in a standstill jam, can trigger panic attacks, cold sweats and an overwhelming desire to stay firmly on familiar A-roads, or indeed, at home.
Experts say that amaxophobia, particularly in midlife women, is far more prevalent than statistics suggest, largely because sufferers are often too ashamed or embarrassed to admit their struggle.
“Many women with amaxophobia feel ashamed and alone,” says Tracey Field, who, with husband Kevin Field, produces The Driving Confident Podcast. Tracey Field says the prevalence of amaxophobia in midlife women is significant.
“It is particularly common in women in their 40s and 50s and it is rarely driving that is the root of the problem,” she says. “Amaxophobia usually starts if we are experiencing high levels of stress – hello midlife!
This could be work, finances, health, relationships; it could be looking after children and our elderly parents. As we are thinking about these stressful things, we start to feel stressed but as we are driving, we can’t problem-solve – so we keep thinking.
“Often those feelings develop into feelings of panic or anxiety, so the first panic attack happens on the road, which is terrifying. Our brain then associates the feelings of anxiety with driving. So, the avoidance isn’t of driving, the avoidance is trying not to have those feelings again.”
But once you’re scared of driving – especially on a motorway – is there any way to get your confidence back?
Motherhood robbed me of my ability to bomb up and down the motorway
I’m one of those midlife women – I’m 47 – for whom driving has been a source of fear. For me, during my 20s as a cub reporter at a national newspaper, the motorways were my professional playground. As a roving news writer, several hundred miles a day was not unusual. I loved hurtling along motorways in my tiny, green Nissan Micra, in pursuit of the next big scoop. My car was an indispensable tool, a mobile office and a gateway to myriad stories.
However, a seismic shift occurred 12 years ago after the birth of my son. What began as mild claustrophobia, a fleeting discomfort in enclosed spaces, spiralled into an “irrational fear” of motorway driving.
I was petrified I would be stranded on a motorway and he would be crying in the back with me unable to comfort him, or that I would somehow lose control and veer us both off the road. It was impossible to manage and I was furious with myself, ridden with guilt that I couldn’t be a “proper mum”. I worried that if something terrible happened, I might not even be able to drive him to hospital.
This wasn’t my first brush with panic behind the wheel. In my 20s, a distressing visit to my grandmother in hospital culminated in a terrifying panic attack on a dark, rainy Boxing Day night. Overwhelmed and disoriented, I abandoned my car at the M3’s Fleet Services and called my mum to come to the rescue.
But that episode was a fleeting blip. It was the advent of motherhood that truly unleashed the beast of anxiety in me. The relentless pressure of parental responsibility, coupled with a newfound vulnerability, created fertile ground for my fear to flourish.
For more than 10 years, I endured this silent torment, a prisoner to my phobia and too ashamed to admit it or seek help. Then last year, I forced myself to confront it, not wanting to transfer my anxieties on to my children. I embarked on a series of one-on-one cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) sessions.
Slowly, painstakingly, I began to dismantle the edifice of my fear, brick by anxious brick. I can now drive on motorways alone or with my family, and while it is not with the same gay abandon of my youth, it is with a new confidence that just a few years ago I did not believe was possible.
Just last week I completed a 320km drive in our family camper van all along the M4 from London to Wales. A major triumph for someone who just a year ago had palpitations at just the thought of completing one junction.
Having overcome my phobia, I am now open about what I felt was an irrational fear, and everyone I speak to has a story of someone they know – almost always a midlife woman – who suffers the same.
Terrified after a traumatic crash in India
Take Amanda Fitzgerald, a 55-year-old Essex-based mother of two grown-up children, who carries the deep scars of a traumatic road incident from her 20s, which cruelly re-emerged as her marriage broke down.
While travelling through India with her mother in 1995, their car was unrecognisably mangled when a truck careened into their rear, crumpling the boot and making the passenger doors almost impossible to exit from.
“The car was concertinaed,” she recalls, “and we were both lucky so have escaped injury-free and not to have been killed instantly.”
Miraculously, despite the horrific nature of the crash, Fitzgerald spent years driving without incident or anxiety. The trauma, it seemed, had been relegated to the archives of her memory.
However, life has a habit of unearthing buried anxieties. The breakdown of Fitzgerald’s marriage in 2018 triggered a delayed reaction, manifesting as a sudden and debilitating panic attack in her car. From that moment on, motorways became anathema, not to mention the sight of lorries in her rear-view mirror.
Her fear imposed absurd detours and limitations: a journey to visit her mother that should have taken less than three hours stretched to a gruelling six or seven as she opted to “avoid motorways” on her sat nav, and the simple act of driving down a dual carriageway to collect her daughter became an impossible feat. The sheer thought of motorway driving was enough to trigger overwhelming dread.
Faced with such profound disruption to her life, she sought help. She found a driving instructor specifically recommended for his expertise in working with women suffering from amaxophobia.
Sessions focused on confronting her deepest anxiety: the looming presence of lorries on motorways.
Despite almost suffering a panic attack during one session, the culmination of Fitzgerald’s efforts came last month in a defining moment: successfully overtaking a lorry on the M4. It was a small victory, perhaps, but for her, it was a giant leap.
When she shared her experience at a TEDx-style event, Speak and Shine, she was shocked to have so many female audience members coming up to her afterwards to confess they too had this hidden fear.
As a public relations expert, Fitzgerald presents as the strongest of characters, so to discover that her “secret shame” echoed mine was a revelation.
She told me: “I’m always encouraging women to put their feet to the fire and do what it takes to make their business a success, but I was afraid of getting my feet anywhere near anything lukewarm; the terror of tackling a motorway was so engulfing. However, I am a firm believer in practising what you preach, so one day I decided to face my fears head-on. I shared my phobia of motorway driving with a friend, who then said she also suffered from amaxophobia, and recommended specialised driving lessons to me.”
“The first time I overtook a lorry during my sessions I felt an overwhelming sense of euphoria,” she says. “Doing ‘on-the-job’ training was so important. I felt free and empowered. An incredible feeling of relief.”
An M25 meltdown ended in terror
For 60-year-old Josephine Pembroke from Chiswick, a stand-up and cabaret performer, the moment her world narrowed to the confines of her vehicle was stark and terrifying.
“It was where the M4 meets the M25,” she recounts, the memory still vivid. “I was changing lanes and had a meltdown. My arms went stiff, I went dizzy, I could not breathe, I was panicking.”
With her 11-year-old son in the back, Pembroke found herself in an impossible situation, stopping her car on a tiny island between slip roads on one of the busiest motorways in Europe. “I was having an anxiety attack. I now know my fear of motorways was amaxophobia.”
In a state of extreme distress, she dialled 999. The transport police arrived and, in a surreal turn of events, had to halt all traffic on the M25 side of the road to allow her to crawl at a “snail’s pace” to the hard shoulder. She was then escorted home by the police, driving at an excruciatingly slow speed.
The aftermath was equally challenging: her driving licence was confiscated and she was forced to “prove that I did not have a serious mental health issue”.
Following this harrowing experience, Pembroke stopped driving altogether, and her anxiety worsened. But despite the significant setbacks, she is steadily rebuilding her confidence through graded exposure.
She can now drive on dual carriageways independently and is committed to gradually building up to motorway driving. However, the sight of the blue motorway sign still triggers “the jitters” – a lingering reminder of her past ordeal.
Pembroke’s journey underscores the deeply personal and often misunderstood nature of phobias. “Amaxophobia is just that – a phobia,” she says, “and phobias by nature are not rational, but this particular phobia is not uncommon, and it needs to be recognised.”
The tools to tackle amaxophobia
Psychotherapist Lucy da Silva identifies several contributing factors unique to this unique demographic.
She says: “Midlife often brings a confluence of stressors, and these periods of heightened stress can lower a woman’s resilience and leave them more susceptible to developing anxieties.”
While Amanda Fitzgerald’s close call was an obvious trigger, da Silva says that even minor, forgotten incidents – a near miss, a sudden brake, or witnessing a roadside accident – can lodge in the subconscious and resurface as anxiety years later.
The good news is that amaxophobia is highly treatable. “It’s not a life sentence,” she assures. “With the right strategies and support, women can absolutely regain their confidence and freedom.”
Key approaches include CBT, and the gradual exposure method of slowly and systematically reintroducing yourself to the feared situation. I started with driving short distances on quiet A roads, then motorways, gradually increasing speed and distance.
Many driving schools now offer specific “motorway confidence” courses with specialist instructors trained to work with anxious drivers, providing a safe, controlled environment to practise and rebuild skills.
But most of all, women need to talk about this issue. By opening up about my “irrational” fear, I found that dozens of other midlife women feel the same. Help is out there; we just need to drive ourselves a little further to find it.
