When I was just over 4 years old my Parents, two younger brothers (2yrs. & 5 mos.) and myself were on the way to visit family in California from New Mexico. Somewhere in Arizona the engine began knocking and making a lot of noise. Dad pulled to the side of the highway and raised the hood with smoke boiling out from the engine compartment. I overheard him explain to my mother that the engine was about to "blow up". My youngest brother (5 mos.) was still in the car asleep. I became hysterical and started screaming "Get the baby! Get the baby! I couldn't understand why my parents were being so nonchalant about the baby beng in the car when it was about to explode.

kerry

I used to believe that cars, trucks, and vans were actually dinosaurs and the groaning of the engine was them roaring when they were upset. I was freaked out by the huge tanker trucks for this reason!

★☆ sister jam ☆★

One day when I was in the car with my aunt she rolled down the car windows and told me not to stick my arm out the window, or it would be cut off. So, I beleived that there were mean people sitting in front of their windows watching for little kids to stick their arms out the window and when they saw one, they would run out to the street with a huge knife and cut the kid's arm off.

Anon

I had an irrational fear when I was a child of being lost. When we were driving, if my mom was at all unsure, she and my sisters couldn't use the word lost or I would start panicking and throw a big fit. My sister's got to where they would egg this on. They would start to realize that maybe mom had taken a wrong turn and they'd say, "Mom, are we lost?" And that's when I would start crying hysterically. For some reason, I thought if you were lost, you were LOST, and you could never be found again.

Dottie

When i was around three, i thought the way you turned a car was by turning the blinker on, and that if you turned the blinker one way and turned the wheel the other the car would crash

Pyro

When I was young I remember going for long drives with my friends (my family didn't have a car). Whenever the driver stopped to pay a toll, I assumed that meant we were on a special road and because we paid, we'd get some sort of special treat. What a let down - no special treat ever appeared, no matter the size of the toll!

Lucy Andris

For some reason, I was not able to grasp the idea of speed. I thought that if everybody was going the same speed on the road, then they would all catch up to eachother and would eventually be driving in a straight line next to eachother. I didn't understand that as long as people started at different points, they could go the same speed without hitting eachother.

Molly

When there was a regular highway with two lanes (one going one way, the other going the other way), I thought that you could drive on either lane, instead of always driving on the right-hand side. I was amazed that there were so few accidents.

Molly

I used to think that Ford Anglia cars were made by Heinz. This was because the oddly sloping rear window, when seen from the side, closely resembled the shape of the panel on a Heinz label.

To this day, if I see a Ford Anglia or a picture of one, I say "that's a Heinz Baked Beans car."

Andy in London

I thought that the bright headlights of cars just automatically went dim when another car was approaching. Back then, cars had the dimmer switch for the headlights on the floor, so I never saw my father using it to dim the lights.

Cara

As a kid I thought grownups made the car move by turning the steering wheel back and forth. The faster you moved the steering wheel, the faster the car went. Not sure how old I was when I finally noticed the gas and brake pedals.

SBS in NJ

I used to believe that the 'hazard' button on your parents car if/when pushed would go into auto-pilot and take you to the Dukes of Hazard town. Yep, a child of the late 70's and early 80's, that's me!!!

S. in Texas

When I was little my parents had this old Chevy Malibu and it had all sorts of problems. The radio only played AM stations, the defroster was always broken, the air conditioning never worked.... one winter evening we were driving down the road and the heater stopped working. I was sitting in the back seat and told my dad to turn on the believal, maybe that would work. My dad was quiet for a while as he tried to figure out what I was telling him to do and then started laughing so hard he almost had to pull over. Turns out the Bi-Level switch on the heater was not the mysterious form of heat or airconditioning that I thought it was!

Diane

When I was about 4, I attempted to convince my mother that as she drove down the road, the car didn't move but the street moved under us like a big conveyor belt.

Stephanie

My sisters and I used to believe that Dad's truck would go where we told it to. We'd tell it (through the vents) to go to McDonald's and it would! Dad couldn't control where it was going. When we got in the parking lot, the truck refused to start until we got to go get a Happy Meal.

Christi T.

I used to think that Artic lorries were called Arctic lorries! It took me until I was in my 20's to realise I was wrong! Haha!

Nicky

Before my sister-in-law got her license, she was taking a trip with her parents. Her father said that he was getting tired and my sister-in-law told him to put the car on cruise control and lay back and take a nap! She thought that the car would control itself and take you where you need to go!

Becky

I used to believe that ALL cars that had a 2-tone canvas-looking roof must be convertibles. So I used to ride around with my parents thinking that all those old people driving those big 'ol Cadillacs (the kind with the 2-tone fabric styled roof) were so COOL, because they had convertibles. I couldn't wait to be OLD.

Suz