I worked up a terrific fear of driving after being a complete failure at Driver Ed in high school, and I didn’t try again until I was 40.
What helped me get past my fear and go ahead with lessons was thinking of something that I feared more than driving (as it happens, it was a long airplane flight) to help make it look less scary by comparison. Also I was responsible for young children and needed to be a competent driver for their sake.
The first time my driving instructor took me on the freeway, I was almost blind with panic. I gestured toward the stream of speeding cars and asked him, “Are all those other guys scared too?”
“If they’re smart, they are,” he said.
It took me a good year to settle down and become just a bit more relaxed as a driver, and more than a year to get comfortable on the freeway. I had to do a lot of self-coaching (sometimes talking myself through situations out loud and reciting things my instructor had said to me) and also remember to concentrate whenever things got tough. I would not even talk to anyone while merging onto the freeway. I still don’t.
“Comfortable,” I say. I’m never really comfortable. Instead I’m very careful and watchful. I never forget that I’m controlling a heavy and very lethal machine and that I’m out there on the road with stupid people, old people, crazy people, sick people, angry people, aggressive people, careless people, and every other kind of people, including some who are driving for the first time. If I never quite stop being scared, I don’t think I will get sloppy.