Reversing out of your driveway, you set off in your brand new car to take it for a test drive. Passing some local shops, you turn up the radio. The next moment you look out of the window and, bizarrely, you don’t recognise the landscape.

You’re now driving on a mountain road, winding its way through a series of snow-capped mountains. Seconds later, a huge lorry is heading right at you, flashing its lights and blaring its horn. You close your eyes and hope for the best. Everything goes black.

When you open them again you’re driving on a long, straight ocean road, beside a beautiful white sandy beach. What on earth is going on here? A minute later the scene has changed yet again and you find yourself driving in your home town and back home onto your driveway.

Then you wake up. It was all just a very strange dream. But just what could it mean?

When interpreting these kind of dreams, it’s important to ask who was driving the car? If you were driving, this is said to signify a level of control. Such a dream might highlight the fact that you’ve got the self-confidence to do everything on your own. You are probably independent and self-sufficient and in charge of the direction you’re heading in your life.

If it wasn’t you driving in the dream, you should try to remember who was. What’s your relationship with this person in real life? How did you feel about them driving you? All of this is important because this dream represents your dependence on the driver, says Dream Of. “You are not in control of your life and following the goals of others instead of your own. If you are driving from the passenger side of a car, then it suggests that you are trying to gain control of the path that your life is taking.”

Driving too fast may reflect “risky decisions or pushing yourself to dangerous limits”, says Dream Bible. If you were driving fast, then your dream may be telling you to slow down and enjoy the scenery of life a bit more. On similar lines, dreaming of being in a car someone else who is driving too fast may reflect your anxiety about how quickly a situation is occurring without being able to slow it down.

It’s not a good sign if you have someone else in the car that you’re driving, according to Dreaming and Sleeping. That’s because their experts believe it means that you are ‘will be disappointed in the near future’ and some of your friends ‘would betray you at any moment’.

“I’ve been driving in my car, it’s not quite a Jaguar.” (Madness, Driving in My Car)

It is hard to imagine a world without cars. The motor industry is one of the biggest in the world and a huge social importance has been attributed to the owning an automobile of your own. So much so that some people spend years saving for their dream car.

It’s no surprise driving has a central position in popular culture. Indeed, if love and romance is the most popular subject for pop songs, then cars certainly come a close second. Musicians across all genres have been singing their praises for decades. Some of the most memorable include Tracy Chapman, Fast Car, The Beatles, Drive My Car; Billy Ocean, Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car; The Cars, Drive; Rose Royce, Car Wash and Gary Numan’s Cars. Television has also been dominated by car shows over recent years with Top Gear, Pimp My Ride and The Grand Tour leading the pack.

In film there are a host of action films that features exciting car races, banking on the audience’s love for cars. From the ‘Fast and Furious franchise’ to ‘Need for Speed’, car chases make for some of the greatest action scenes in film history. Furthermore, iconic characters such as James Bond, or those played by James Dean were always shown driving powerful cars that have become cultural icons. And who could forget the classic Mini Cooper scenes that made The Italian Job so great?