It is common for people to attribute a false sense of purpose to evolution, calling the evolutionary adaptations of certain species ingenious, or clever. This terminology implies that plant and animal species design their adaptations. In fact, every evolutionary adaptation begins as a genetic mutation, the result of blind chance. The first ape with opposable thumbs, for example, was a freak in the company of other apes. There is no observable purpose or ingenuity to evolution, and thus, no principal difference between inherited disorders and useful adaptations, such as my main concern, fear.

Fear must have proven useful from the very beginning of complex organic life. Animals born without fear likely perished in all kinds of dangerous situations. In the present day, however, members of the human species do not face life-threatening dangers on a daily basis. On the contrary, physical safety in civilization has progressed to the point that death, a fairly universal natural phenomenon, is considered unusual and difficult to deal with. The ability to fear death is thus not constantly necessary, and as a result, fear is instead directed at objects and ideas that do not threaten physical safety. The fatal is often conflated with the simply distressing, and again with the typically harmless. This brings us to automotive transportation.

The automotive driver ought to be feared. A driver commands a machine that is, on a very basic level, deadly. In the seat of a working car, one can generate massive speed and ramming power, more than sufficient to kill. A car also functions as an explosive device, a crushing metal weight, an airtight container and a generator of poisonous fumes. The entire science of car safety resembles nothing if not a mad dash to catch up with the basic deadly power with which motorized vehicles have always been built. The majority of drivers, even after road tests and (voluntary) programs of driver education, have little or no emergency medical training, no practical experience with stress situations and no casual access to substantial rescue equipment. On the road, at the very least, one can feel justified in fearing for survival, though in my experience of the road, most do not. When one does observe genuine fear in a driver, it is often based on comparatively superficial dangers.

Once, walking through town, I passed two cars at right angles, recently collided in the middle of a small intersection. There were police, but no injuries or fatalities. The cars, moving at low speed appropriate to a narrow city street, had not accumulated deadly ramming force. The driver of one car, a young white male of some 19 or 20 years, had been left standing alone for a moment, and one could judge from his look that he was responsible for the incident. At least, he considered himself responsible. From one look at this driver, one could draw several conclusions about the nature of fear in humanity.

The car had taken a good-sized dent, perhaps suffered a broken headlight, but would probably run again. In addition to this, our driver was unharmed, for which, by all rights, he ought to have been thanking Christ and Vishnu, throwing his arms up in supplication towards the clouded Canadian sky. Instead, he had the look of utter, dismal fear.

Reference: Car Shipping > Transportation > The Fear of a Car Accident