I used to believe that all roads were perfectly straight. From my too-short-to-see-above-the-dash perspective, I noticed that my mother had to keep turning the wheel (for curves in the road and such) and I remember thinking that something must be wrong with our car.

Brandy

When I was really little I believed that if the hazard lights turned on when you were driving the car would split in half and one half would turn left and the other right. Needless to say I was terrified of sitting in the middle.

anghi

MY mom woudl always tell us kids "don't hang your hands out of the car when I'm driving or they will get chopped off"
I grew up thinking there were really creepy people who drove around incars with knives chopping off little kid hands just for kicks.
It never dawned on me until I was an adult that my mom meant that it would happen if she got in an accident.
My brother, it turns out, believed the same thing his whole childhood as well.

Chris Eckert

I remember quite vividly a time when I was about five years old. After visiting a McDonald's, my dad was driving my Mom and I to my Grandmother's. I was happily eating my Happy Meal when suddenly I realised that the family was in grave danger. Hysterically crying, I told my dad he would kill us all because he was "drinking and driving" just like the tv commercials warn you not to.
My mother got a huge kick out of trying to explain the relative safety of the effect of strawberry milkshakes on one's motoring skills.

Nic

when i was younger my dad used to tell me that if i stuck any body part out of an open car window as the car was moving - that the car would know, and immediately start rolling its windows up. thus, if i stuck my head out of the car, i would be instantly decapitated! he told me it happened to a little girl in japan - and told me to be careful. i was extremely scared and believe this about cars until i was NINE YEARS OLD!

Mellissa

I used to believe that speedbumps were actually there for the blind to drive, and they read it like braille. Thanks to my older brother and sister of course.

Rocky

When I was 5,I used to believe that hitch-hikers were actually directing traffic, helping drivers by showing them the way to go. One morning on my way to school I decided to stick my thumb out to "help". I couldn't understand why all these cars kept pulling over - and why the drivers were getting annoyed when I walked away!

Madcat

My evil babysitter Patti left me in her car (a green Vega, of course) so she could go shopping. Before she left, she told me not to touch what I later learned to be an emergency brake, because if I did, the car would blow up. It seemed perfectly logical that there would be a lever to pull to make a car blow up, since I had seen so many cars blow up on TV. To this day, I can't use the emergency brake without feeling a twinge of trepidation.

jamby

My dad told me the hazard light button was actually for the ejection seat. And we didn't know which one it ejected. Thanks Dad.

Anon

Because of my name, Aaron, I once thought Air Conditioning was actually "Aaron-ditioning" and was for my pleasure only and to make other people cool you had to buy "Joe-ditioning" or "Sarah-ditioning" or whatever their name might be.
Yeah, I ate a lot of paint chips.

Aaron Guck