Dreaming about
driving

For many adults, driving is the clearest everyday picture of being in charge, since you choose the road, the speed and when to stop. Dreaming about driving usually reflects that same thing, how much control you feel over the direction of your life. A smooth drive tends to mirror confidence. But when the brakes fail or someone else takes the wheel, the dream points to the part of your life that seems to be steering you.

In a driving dream the details carry most of the meaning. Who was driving, what the road was like, whether you could see ahead, and where the car ended up all change the reading. So does whether you drive in waking life. Our dreams pick up what we spend our days doing,^[1] which means that for someone with a two-hour commute, a driving dream is often just the commute replaying.

What dreaming about driving means

Driving is one of the few dream actions where you're both moving and responsible, and most readings come down to how those two sit together. These are the ones that come up most.

How much control you feel

The commonest reading of a driving dream is about control. Steering well, braking on time and choosing your turns tend to show up when you feel on top of things. The idioms are all there too (in the driver's seat, asleep at the wheel, a backseat driver), and one that makes you wince may be your dream talking. A car that pulls to one side, a wheel that turns on its own or pedals that don't respond point the other way. They suggest a situation where you feel like a passenger in your own life (a job with constant changes, a family decision made over your head).

The direction your life is taking

The road you were driving on says something too, and it's easy to forget once you wake. A clear motorway can mean the way ahead feels obvious, while fog, winding mountain roads and missed exits tend to come when you're unsure where you're going. Was the destination clear in the dream? Many people dream of driving for hours without knowing where to, which is a fair picture of being busy without a sense of purpose.

The pace you're living at

Speed is the third thing to look at in a driving dream. Driving much too fast, unable to slow down, often comes with a life that's moving faster than you'd like, a new job and a move in the same month, say. And crawling along in traffic is its opposite, the frustration of waiting for something that won't hurry.

Dreaming about driving off a cliff

This is the most searched driving nightmare, and the drop is what makes it. A car going over a cliff usually lines up with a sense that a plan or a pattern is heading for an edge. That might be money running out, a relationship near the end, or a pace of work you know you can't keep up. If you drove off on purpose, look at a risky decision you're tempted by, but if you woke before landing, it's often a fear of the fall more than of anything after it.

Dreaming about driving into water

Driving into a lake, a river or the sea is about being overwhelmed. Water tends to stand for feeling in dreams, so a car (your way of getting through life) disappearing into it suggests emotions taking over from plans. It often comes in periods of grief or stress when you've tried to keep going as normal. And whether you got out matters, because escaping the sinking car is a very different ending from waiting inside it.

Dreaming about someone else driving

Sitting in the passenger seat or the back while someone else drives is about trust and control. If the driver was someone you know, look at whether they have more say in your life than you'd like, a parent, a partner or a boss. A crash with someone else at the wheel, a version many people search for its spiritual meaning, is usually about the fear of paying for someone else's decisions. It doesn't predict an accident, but it can be a good reason to ask where you've handed over the wheel.

Dreaming about losing control of the car

Brakes that don't work, a steering wheel that won't turn, a car rolling backwards down a hill... this is the most common driving dream of all. It tends to come when something in your waking life is moving on its own momentum and you can't stop it. A habit, a spending pattern or a conflict that keeps escalating all fit. If it ended in a crash, the page on car accidents goes further.

Dreaming about falling asleep while driving

Nodding off at the wheel in a dream is often a plain sign of tiredness, and if you've been short of sleep, take it as a nudge to get more. But it can also be about running on autopilot, getting through the days without really paying attention to where they're going. Did you wake up in time in the dream? That ending tends to be about catching yourself before a mistake.

Dreaming about driving off a bridge

A bridge is a crossing from one side of something to the other, a move or a new job or a new stage in a relationship. Going off the side of one usually points to a fear that the change won't work out, that you'll fall between the old life and the new one. It often appears halfway through a transition, when you've left one side and can't yet see the other.

Dreaming about driving a bus

A bus carries other people, so driving one is about responsibility for others, a team, a family, a class. If it went well, you're probably more comfortable in charge than you think. But if the bus was too big to handle or the passengers kept shouting directions, look for a role where too many people depend on you (or tell you how to do it).

Dreaming about driving according to Jung and Freud

Driving isn't on either man's list, so the sections below borrow their ideas and try them on a drive.

Jung: who is at the wheel

One of Jung's ideas is that a dream supplies what a lopsided waking attitude leaves out.^[2] So a person who runs a tight ship may dream of brakes that won't work, the loss of control that waking life never allows. His shadow, the side of yourself you've disowned, gives the passenger-seat dreams a second reading: a driver you can't see clearly, or a passenger who grabs the wheel, can be a part of you that has been steering without being asked.

Freud: a journey, a fall and the commute

Freud wrote that a dream pictures dying as leaving on a trip, and he counted falling among the typical dreams.^[3] Applying that (ours, not his), a drive that ends at a cliff edge or in water sits where his journeys and falls meet, and what's ending is more likely a job, a relationship or a way of living than a life. For anyone who drives every day he'd also have looked at the commute, the car park and the radio first.

Other readings

Hundreds of the trance readings given by the American psychic Edgar Cayce were about dreams, and he held that a car in a dream often stands for the dreamer's own body or self.^[4] By that reading the state of the car (brakes, tires, a warning light) can point at your health or energy, so he'd have asked whether you've been running on empty. It's a reason to check in with your body, not a diagnosis.

The spiritual meaning of driving in dreams

A dream of driving has an old relative in the chariot, and one Upanishad speaks of dreaming one.

Chariots in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

Among the oldest Upanishads, the Brihadaranyaka says the dream state has no chariots to ride, no animals to harness and no roads, and that the dreamer makes all of them.^[5] The text is describing what a dream is, not reading a driving dream, but read that way the car, the road and the speed in yours are all your own making.

Questions to ask about your driving dream

The car, the road and who held the wheel are what make a driving dream yours. Run through these before you settle on a reading.

• Who was driving, and did you trust them?
• Could you see the road ahead, and did you know where you were going?
• Were you going too fast, too slow or just right?
• How did the drive end?
• Where in your life do you feel in charge, or not, right now?

Your answers are exactly what Oniri works with when it reads a dream, which is why it asks for them first. If driving nightmares keep waking you up, these tips for having fewer nightmares can help, and it's worth mentioning to a doctor if they wreck your sleep.