What’s the difference between paranoia and planning? When is it reasonable to live in fear?

My car has started to turn off randomly while I’m driving. I’m going about 25 miles an hour with a small amount of pressure on the accelerator. Each time it has happened, I’ve been able to react quickly by pulling over to the side of the road to restart the car. Nevertheless, it got me worried.

I took the car to a mechanic. But the mechanic wasn’t able to reproduce the issue and couldn’t fix it. But he said to try different gasoline and pay attention to see if it happened again.

Well, it did continue happening. It’s happened about five times now. It’s hard to predict. But luckily, it’s only happened on small roads, not at high speed on the highway.

While I’m going 20-25 miles an hour, I should be able to coast to a stop if I’ve been paying attention. Given this new risk, I’ve actually become more aware of my surroundings at all times. Imagine if I were texting and the car turned off suddenly. I would lose valuable seconds. At the least, it would be embarrassing to stall in the middle of the road. At worst, it could cause a crash.

In addition to driving un-distracted, I now drive with a game-plan. I’m always thinking, “what if it turned off here? Or there? What’s my exit strategy?”

I’m not a mechanic or a financial advisor or really anyone that should be giving advice. But I think I might keep my car like this and ride it out for a while.

As a result, I will drive less distracted and with an exit strategy plan in mind. I know that this will improve my driving.

If you watch car crash videos, you’ll notice two things: 1. These videos are super addicting. 2. And many of the crashes were caused by distracted drivers.

The easier we make it to drive, the more distracted we allow ourselves to be. Massive innovations in autonomous and self-driving vehicles are coming soon to new car buyers. Even any “regular” car produced in the last few years has so much comfort that it lowers me into a state of relaxation, allowing my mind to wander away from the road.

Paranoia is different than planning. Someone that lives in a constant state of tension and preparation for a zombie apocalypse is paranoid. But a “global pandemic” should move from paranoia to planning to prevent it from happening again.

If I drive with constant fear and attention that my car will turn off, this is planning because it’s happened before and could definitely happen again.

When my car resolves its issues, or when I get a new car, I’ll no longer need to live in paranoia. But I can keep my planning. Maybe I won’t need to spend each moment thinking of an exit strategy, should my car turn off. But why not keep the un-distracted driving instead of going back into the comfort of distraction?