To Some, It’s the Height of Panic : Acrophobics find crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge a nightmare. But help is at hand.

Her palms are sweaty, she’s hyperventilating and her body is shaking like a palm tree in a hurricane. Baltimore store manager Jackie Scelsi looks so uptight, you’d think she had just survived a major car crash. But for Scelsi, what she’s about to undergo is far worse than vehicular mayhem: She is preparing to cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, the Mother of All Scary Bridges.

“It’s the height” that bothers her, says the acknowledged acrophobic. “I’ve never driven over it by myself. Until I found out about this service, if someone else was driving me across, I’d have to put my seat way back, lock all the doors and turn the radio way up. That’s the only way I could handle it.”

The “service” Scelsi is referring to is the one Officer Kevin Cox, a member of the Maryland Toll Facilities Police, is about to provide. Cox is going to drive Scelsi over the bridge in her own car. In so doing, he will be ferrying across one of the nearly 1,000 motorists every year who find the Bay Bridge so freaky, they can’t navigate it without help.

“We get all kinds,” says the amiable Cox. “Some tell us they could drive it when they were younger, and can’t do it now. Some are just afraid of heights. Some might have had a bad experience on the bridge, like been in a backup or an accident. Some just freeze in the middle of the bridge.”

And all of them are terrified by one of the more intimidating structures in construction history. The twin spans of the Bay Bridge, which unite Annapolis and Maryland’s eastern shore, are on a heavily trafficked road between the Baltimore-Washington metroplex and a number of Atlantic Coast beach resorts.

The bridge is 4.3 miles long, and at one point rises more than 200 feet above the water. It is also narrow--the eastbound span, built in 1952 and renovated two years ago, carries only two lanes of traffic; the westbound span, erected in 1973, has just three lanes.

The older span contains Jersey barriers--concrete sides--which come up to car window height. They serve a safety function, but also promote a disquieting feeling: At the top of the bridge, it’s impossible to see the land on either end. The newer bridge is even weirder--it’s uphill most of the way, has metal safety barriers through which the water can be seen and at one point features metal-ribbed wind grates set in the outside lanes which must be negotiated with extreme care.

No wonder even truckers find the bridge a bit hard to take. “Trucks have to be in the right lane on the westbound bridge,” says Cox, “but occasionally we’ll find them in the middle, and when we stop them, the drivers will get out of the truck shaking like a leaf, and admit they’re afraid.”

Not that the Bay Bridge is the only span which has to deal with this problem. Michigan’s Mackinac Bridge, which connects the state’s upper and lower peninsulas, has had a “Timid Motorist Program” for at least 25 years. Nearly 800 people annually are driven across the five-mile span, which rises 190 feet above the water. “We would rather drive them,” says bridge director Walter North, “than have someone get out there and freeze up.”

Freezing up, the loss of control, is what bridge phobia is all about. Says Jerilyn Ross, a psychotherapist who heads the Rockville, Md.-based Anxiety Disorders Assn. of America: “Underlying all phobias is fear of being in a place where a person has a perception of being trapped and not being able to get to safety. What they’re really afraid of is not the bridge itself, but their own feeling, the loss of control.”

Ross, who has had several patients suffering from Bay Bridge phobia, has seen the absolute worst of the phenomenon--she once treated a man who could only cross the bridge while his wife drove and he was locked in the trunk.

Most phobic people are nowhere near as extreme, but their fears are just as real. Barbara Shaw of Fairfax, Va., drove the bridge regularly until about five years ago when, early one morning, she had a panic attack. For three years she drove 100 miles out of her way to avoid the structure, then gave that up after hearing about what bridge personnel refer to as the “drive over” program.

“I’ve never liked the bridge to begin with,” says Shaw, who has been driven over four times now. “You go too fast on that thing, and you start thinking there’s no side.”

The bridge does not publicize its service, but word has leaked out. Phobic drivers are supposed to call bridge personnel an hour before crossing, then pull over at the toll plaza while waiting for an officer to arrive. The bridge runs a vehicle check on the motorist, and keeps a card file on its regulars because, says telecommunications supervisor Penny Sandrock, “we can’t allow our officers into just any car.”