transport: cars

When I was young, we sometimes used to go driving on holiday in Europe. Sometimes there were some very long tunnels under mountains.

I used to believe that when we came out of the other side of the tunnel, we were really still in it but the walls were showing pictures of the outside. Like a big tubular TV.

I used to think the road we lived on was the longest road on the planet. In reality it's about 50 miles long. Today, I drive the length of it regularly when visiting relatives.

At the age of fourteen I had an old motorbike that I rode around the fields. My dad glanced at it one day and said "your milometer runs out soon". I asked him what he meant and he explained that when all the numbers reach nine and then turn over the engine just locks up completely and never goes again. I told him I didn't believe him but I rode it veeerrry slowly when it got near to that number and breathed a big sigh of relief when it didn't stop.

I was around six when I asked my father what why some cars had GB on the back. He informed me that it was the next stage after being a Learner driver and it meant 'Getting Better'. Seemed reasonable to me.

once, when riding in the car with an aunt, I asked her if we could turn up
the air condiioner. she told me no, because if the air conditioner blew too long on
one part of your body it would freeze. I really believed this until I was close to 20!
I thought that there was some chemical or something that came from the vents!

I'm from Israel, and in Hebrew the word 'traffic jam' is the same as a cork. And I always believed that traffic jams are caused because there's a cork in the middle of the street (like from a coke bottle) that somebody left and all the other cars are just trying to avoid

When my brother and I were young, my mom told us there was a bridge to Hawaii. My brother was fascinated with this. I played it off like I knew better, but I secretly wondered how much gas it would take to get to Hawaii.

When I was very small, I used to have terrifying dreams about being stuck in a car in the middle of a large drawbridge as it opened. I still do on occasion, and I don't like traveling over large bridges of any kind (sometimes the dreams are about bridges that I know are not drawbridges in real life.) I sometimes wonder whether I am destined to die in a drawbridge accident.

My mom would tell us kids to press our hands on the roof of the car as we passed under a bridge. This was to hold up the bridge so it would not fall on us as we passed under it.

love you Mom :)

I used to believe that cars were alive and their headlights were eyes.

When I would be in the car with my parents as a really young kid, and I heard them mention "high beams", I thought they were saying "high beans". I pictured yellow string-beans as part of the car headlights!

i used to think the pedestrians were people who had a job to pull a lever that would make the earth move instead of the car being the one to move.

When I was four or five, the theme song to Chevrolet advertisements went "the heartbeat of America is today's Chevrolet". Because of this, I thought that Chevrolet made a different kind of car ever day, for instance, they might make Impalas on Monday, Citations on Tuesday, etc.

One day while sitting in the back of my mum's car (aged 6 or so), I somehow invented the belief that if we stopped on a bus stop for any reason at all, we'd turn into a taxi, have to take someone wherever they wanted to go, and I'd be late for school. This was quite a fearsome problem, given rush-hour traffic, and that being late was SUCH a taboo...

I thought an Automatic car drove itself, like Herbie in the Disney films

My mother always told me that if i stuck my arm out the window, while she was driving. The other drivers would come along and hit it.... I use to feel very sorry for dogs...