I dream almost every night and I remember a great deal of my dreams almost every time. While my dreams vary from being capable of flight and throwing fireballs - which are never on target - I have certain elements of dreams that are basically present every single time that a certain thing appears in said dream. This happened again last night for probably the 148th time in my life.
I was operating a rather large vehicle like a Ford Explorer or similar SUV and was in rather packed traffic as is customary in my dreams. Every time I needed to use the brakes I was pushing them to the floor and even had to use the hand brake in order to get the car to stop before hitting the cars in front of and around me. The car was slowing down because of the brakes but not stopping entirely. I did have a minor ding with another car but the driver of that vehicle didn't seem all that bothered by it, thankfully.
I haven't owned a car of any sort for nearly a decade because we don't really need them in South East Asia. If anything, having one would be a huge pain the ass because there is nowhere to park and the roads are slam packed here in Da Nang anyway. Combine this with the fact that you can take a taxi to the other side of town for less than $5, and it doesn't make much sense to have a car unless you have a kid and I do not.
This lack of owning a vehicle makes the presence of them constantly in my dreams even more perplexing. I have had only 2 accidents in my life and in neither of these were the brakes really the issue. One of the accidents was my fault and the other was not. It's not like I am traumatized by poorly-functioning brakes by something that happened in my real life. That is not the case at all.
Whenever this recurring element in my dreams happens, it is always a very large vehicle such as a Ford Explorer. This brings about another point: I have NEVER owned a gigantic car in my life and have only driven them a couple of times. My cars were always very sensible mid-size sedans or even economy cars like Ford Escorts of which I owned two during my early years as a driver. The brakes always worked wonderfully in these cars.
So if a psychologist out there is reading this I am kind of wondering why it is that something that has never actually happened in my life is something that I constantly dream about. Is non-functioning brakes where I have to use an alternate method of stopping some sort of subconscious thing lurking in the back of my mind? I really can't see any sort of literal connection to my real life or relation to past experiences.
I did find this response on Quora
Now while that does sound like a reasonable explanation, it also seems kind of like a astrology sort of answer. It could be applied to anything and anyone and therefore it does make sense but is it accurate? I saw another one out there that applied to relationships and once again, no matter the person's situation in life it could apply to almost everyone if they think about it hard enough.
For me it is just something that happens in dreams and I don't believe anyone really knows the real answer about why we dream about certain things. Maybe I am just terrified of car accidents or of damaging other people's property. For me I don't see any reason to overcomplicate it.
Does anyone else out there ever dream about this sort of thing?