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The Dangers of a Panic Attack While Driving

Having a panic attack while driving can make you a danger to yourself and other motorists on the road, but knowing how to recognize an impending panic attack can help prevent disaster. There have been stories of people falling asleep at the wheel, of road rage incidents, and of other behavioral problems behind the wheel for a long time now. Every story is usually about someone “losing control,” and a panic attack is all about loss of control in the face of stress.

There is often a direct correlation between driving and panic attacks, actually. Busy roads, crazy intersections, impatient motorists and multiple other factors all contribute to the stress of driving to and from our destinations on a daily basis. The roads have almost become war zones as we travel from place to place, always in a hurry and always wanting to be the “first” to arrive at our place of work or at home.

Effects of an Attack While Driving 

A panic attack while driving can cause the most sudden of emotional and physical effects on the human body possible. The danger of this is obvious and the cause is generally controllable. A panic attack, in fact, causes the most complex and fast reaction known in the human body. This is because it affects so many organisms and bodily systems in so many different ways at such a great rate of speed that it is completely unpredictable.

Panic attacks affect the operation of the eyes, motor skills, major gland functions, brain functions, heart functions, lung functions, and many more systematic functions throughout the human body. The metabolism of the body is increased and several blood sugars flood the vital organs causing, quite literally, a massive panic on the body’s organs. Once sugars and excessive fatty acids are released into the bloodstream, they are carried throughout the body to attempt to “cope” with the stressors or causes of your panic attack, often with disastrous results.

Panic attack symptoms are, in fact, twice as likely to appear in women as they are in men. They almost always begin in adolescence and continue into adulthood. If you are prone to panic attacks while young, you will almost always be prone to them throughout your life.

Having a panic attack while driving, therefore, is a dangerous but often inevitable possibility because of the “built-in” stress of driving and of the roads today.