Skip to content
You Are Here Dreams 1-2-3 » Dream Topics » Meaning of a Car Accident Dream

Meaning of a Car Accident Dream

emotions in dreams - rage

Meaning of a car accident dream

This is a gem of a dream for showing dream symbolism in action, excerpted from the original post at Reddit Dreams:

Howdy! I had an interesting dream and was wondering if y’all had any clue as to the meaning. …The road I was going down [in my car] had a major slope. I had both feet out on the side of the road as my brakes. At some point I just decided to stop doing that and let myself go. I went down this slope faster and faster when all of a sudden I hit something. The sound I heard was the sound of a plastic bin scraping the street. Things froze for a bit and in my head popped out a news headlines about a semi truck hitting several cars before flashing back to the main scene of the dream. I looked down and saw my left foot was gone up the ankle.

To understand this dream begin with the symbolism of driving and a steep slope. Driving in dreams is frequently associated with movement in your life, the road of life you are on, where you are going, where you have been.

A slope can symbolize going downhill in the figurative sense, or loss of control, a situation that gains momentum. The action of going faster and faster in the dream suggests something gaining speed.

Crashing into something, like in this dream, can symbolize “bumps in the road” and hardships. The accident isn’t traumatic, but there is a sacrifice: the dreamer’s lower left leg. Legs and feet are also associated with making your life move, so losing part of a leg could describe a situation that required a sacrifice to the dreamer’s life’s forward movement in order to slow it down.

Which is the case. The dreamer quit a coaching job that was “getting out of control. Things were getting faster and faster with little order until I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

Once you know what to look for, you can easily see that story played out in this dream.

6 thoughts on “Meaning of a Car Accident Dream”

  1. I had a dream that I drove my car without incident and parked it in some mud. I didn’t realize the mud was deep and my car began to sink in it. Realizing this was happening, I was easily able to escape through the driver window. I told someone what had happened and we went to see if we could get my car out. When we got back to there, it just looked as if it was too deep to pull my car out. In my dream, I felt good that I was able to escape the car and yet, not sure what would happen next.

    1. Hi Heather, dream scenarios involving cars are so versatile for creating dream symbolism. Your dream created an interesting scenario that appears to be highly symbolic. Car stuck in mud… It could mean your life has become stuck in some sort of figurative (or literal) mess. To understand the symbolism, think of it as similar to a metaphor or figure of speech that uses mud and/or being stuck.

      The dream provides two supporting details to help you understand it. One, you seek help for the situation, and two, the car appears to be too stuck (translated as the situation in life appears to be too mucked up) to get it out. Finally, your reaction of being grateful says a lot about how you feel about the underlying situation. Now reflect on your life and find the situation the dream describes.

    1. I wanted to reply to you weeks ago but life got in the way. Flying out of a windshield in s dream can mean something has come to a sudden halt, or conversely a sudden start. It can show that you feel vulnerable if the windshield feeling protected, because a windshield protects you and that could be the basis of the symbolism. It could express a feeling of being out of control. You need to view the action of flying out of the windshield in the context of the larger story. I can only take guesses from where I sit, and I can point you toward my free online intro to dream interpretation and analysis

  2. I have a lot of dreams including cars and automobile accidents. Several of those dreams have been recurring in certain periods of my life. But last night I had a dream that I slammed on the brakes so hard that my car crashed (or crumpled up) because of braking so hard. And not because I hit anything. I hit absolutely nothing. I just hit the brakes to stop very quickly and my car crumpled up. I can get there is some sort of symbolism here. But I am having some difficulty figuring it out. Any ideas would be helpful.

    1. Slamming on the brakes can mean that you want to stop where something is heading. It can be where your life is head in general, or in a specific situation. The key to the symbolism is the damage to your car from braking. Perhaps it’s saying “I overreact(ed).” Start with that idea and look closely at your feelings. Something in that scene of the dream suggests that you want to slow down or stop but need to be careful how forcefully you go about it.

As Dr. Frasier Crane says, I'm listening. Leave a comment.

Discover more from J.M. DeBord Dream Interpretation

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading