What do you have a fear of crossing if you suffer from dromophobia?

The fear of crossing streets, or its terms dromophobia and agyrophobia, is a specific phobia that affects a person's ability to cross a street or roadway where cars or vehicles may be present. The term dromophobia comes from the Greek 'dromos', meaning racetrack.

Dromophobia may result from experiencing a road accident and thus may be classified as a subtype of panic disorder with agoraphobia (PDA). As such, dromophobia, especially fear of crossing streets alone may be a component of accident-related posttraumatic stress disorder, as a reaction to a situation reminiscent of the past traumatic event. Sometimes this behavior may be misinterpreted during Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom assessment as a caution (i.e., a normal learning behavior) rather than fear (which is an abnormal avoidant behavior).

Fear of crossing streets may also result from an anticipatory anxiety related to person's limited mobility due to stiff person syndrome (SPS). In fact a person with SPS crossing a street may develop attacks of increasing stiffness or spasms.