Ian Wallace Interpretation:
Any time you create a dream involving a vehicle, you are considering how you can make progress towards a desired outcome in your waking life. Being in an out-of-control vehicle suggests that you feel you are losing command of your ability to make progress towards your chosen goal. Rather than panicking at your fear that you’ve lost all control of a situation, guide it back on course by asking for help from others as you drive forward with your ambitions. In which situation might you be driving yourself too hard but assistance could be available? One of the overriding concerns in an out-of-control vehicle dream is that you will be involved in a crash or fall into a dangerous situation. Falling seems to be the ultimate loss of control, resulting in complete failure to achieve your chosen outcome.
Dream: You are travelling in a vehicle that seems to have gone out of control. The vehicle is most often a car but may be any form of motorized transport. No matter how carefully you try to proceed, the vehicle never goes where you want and it often spins uncontrollably and dangerously. You desperately try to slow down and come to a halt because you are scared about crashing into things and damaging the car, or hurting yourself and your passengers. You may also find yourself going backwards down a hill as you frantically try to use the brakes but they have little or no effect.
Meaning: Dreaming about a vehicle indicates you are thinking about the path that you are currently taking through life. This is often a career path and you are usually considering how you can further yourself professionally. The most common vehicle in the dream is a car because this symbolizes your personal drive and ambition. Larger mass transport vehicles, such as trains or buses, tend to represent teams or organizations you may be a part of. Although you may have a plan that you are carefully trying to put into practice, you aren’t able to follow the direction in which you really want to go. Circumstances seem to be getting out of hand and the more you try to control the situation, the more disconnected you seem to become from it. An imminent crash shows you are going to be in contact or conflict with something unavoidable. If you find yourself going backwards in the vehicle, particularly downhill, it shows you may be trying to reverse a decision or back out of a commitment. Loss of brakes shows that some conflict with others may be inevitable. You would like to manoeuvre out of the circumstances that you have found yourself in, but are concerned that it might be difficult to extricate yourself. Although you may feel withdrawing is the best way to resolve this tension, the only way forward is to regain control by facing up to the challenge that lies in front of you.
Action: Rather than abandoning your present position, try considering the areas where you do have control. Some of these areas might not be obvious and may also require you to influence someone instead of trying to specifically control their behaviour. Don’t be afraid to ask for help from others as they can help you take charge of the situation and put you firmly back in the driver’s seat. It may be difficult to accept that there are some situations that you really have no control over, but the more you try to control uncertainty, the more out of control you usually feel.
Background: When learning to control any sort of vehicle, there are often situations where the task seems completely overwhelming. If the vehicle does not seem to be responding to our attempts to manoeuvre it, it may seem as if it has a mind of its own. Personal transport is often associated with where we plan to go in life and what we want to achieve, and we hear this in phrases like ‘a vehicle for my ambitions’ and ‘the road to success’. We also describe our motivations as our ‘drives’, and how ‘driven’ certain people are as they progress towards a particular goal.