I'm a few days away from a long road trip and it's got me thinking about the cars along the way. We have created a mechanical herd. Instead of following some invisible magnetic markers like birds, we travel along hard paths with painted lines. We follow the directions of ever changing flashing lights, even at times when it seems like their instructions are arbitrary. I wonder if animals watch us and wonder why we move along roads. It must be like when house pets watch us as we watch TV or work on the computer. Why are they just staring at that box? Maybe it's as mysterious to them as migratory patterns of birds or fish are to us.
When I was a kid I thought driving would be so wonderful and if you think about it, it's actually kind of incredible what we take for granted. By pressing a pedal and turning a wheel any idiot can travel at break-neck speeds to their favorite destination. When it was time to go and get my driver's license I was so nervous. I had practiced for weeks doing various maneuvers in the high school parking lot. Looking back I find it amusing that I thought it was such a big deal. Spend five minutes driving around and you have to ask yourself how 90% of the people on the road ever got their licenses in the first place.
While I don't consider myself to be the most courteous person, I do tend to be constantly aware of other drivers around me and don't go out of my way to make their drive time anymore of a hassle than it needs to be. It seems that kind of mentality is more the exception rather than the rule. There is this ever-present sense that people feel the need to only watch out for themselves and if someone else gets cut off then that's just too bad. If you've ever witnessed the boarding of trains in India you might get an idea of what I'm talking about. There are simply too many people for anyone to be courteous. If you let someone else ahead of you, there is a good chance you won't get on. That's not to say Indian people are by nature rude, just that they do what is necessary. Here in America there are just so many people on the road and everyone feels they are the most important car out there (and in their world I guess that's probably true) so it becomes reflected in their driving.
I mentioned before that traffic is like a mechanical herd. It's a living thing, even though it's made up of machines. The cars themselves aren't alive, but their operators are. How many times have you been driving on the highway when everything comes to a grinding halt. You're sitting there and it's just an endless river of cars in front of you and it's backing up behind you. You're wondering what could be the problem. Why are things at a standstill? It could be a wreck. In fact in my frustration in those situations I've expected there to a head in the road. That's the only excuse I was willing to accept. When the traffic clears you know what it turns out to be most of the time? Nothing. The event, whatever it was, has passed. You've been experiencing the vehicular equivalent of an aftershock. After what seems like forever (which usually turns out to be minutes) you drive by and see it was a car on the side of the road or even worse, a car on the opposite side of the road, meaning people on your side allowed themselves to be slowed by something that wasn't even in their direct path of forward movement.
When I was being taught to drive my dad told me that I not only had to drive my car, but I had to drive the cars around me. At the time I thought it was a funny thing to say and probably made a smart ass comment about it. And yes, I'm not actually driving the cars around me (if I were we'd all be going a lot faster and using our signals to indicate lane changes), but instead I'm spending a significant amount of my awareness on what everyone else is doing. A trained monkey can operate a car, provided they can reach the gas pedal. In itself it's not that difficult. Now you put 12 monkeys into cars and put them on roads together and you'll probably end up with a demolition derby. Some of the people driving today are probably worse than those crazy chimps. Which brings up the question, why aren't people required to retake their driving test every five years? I'm not just talking about making sure you understand that a flashing red light at an intersection should be treated like a four-way stop. Taking a full on driving exam and road test would ensure that people are always keeping their driving skills up to date. A driver's license should be like a heavy equipment operator's license, it must be updated at regular intervals with more than just an eye exam and address change.
Lately there has been a lot of talk about talking or texting on a mobile phone while driving. According to some sources it reduces the reaction time of a driver to that of a 70 year old. Unless that 70 year old is Harrison Ford, I'm betting it means you're going to be too slow to do much of anything except say "oh shit!" While I agree that texting and driving is probably a recipe for a collision (don't say accident because that implies no one was at fault), I wonder if there isn't a more overall problem with attention spans. People can barely focus on one thing at a time anymore. Everything has to do more than one thing. A phone doesn't just make phone calls. It's a music player. It checks your email. You can get instant messages. You can update Twitter the second something (in)significant happens in your life. Cars aren't just equipped with radios anymore. Now you have multi-disc CD changes or MP3 players. And to entertain those kids, some even have TVs built-in. So a minivan is starting to look a lot more like your living room rather than just a means to get from Point A to Point B. This level of comfort tends to make people forget that they are in fact not in their living room. Driving becomes the second most important thing while on the road. The moment that becomes the case it's an eventuality that something bad is going to happen. There is a saying when it comes to NASCAR: "A crash isn't something that could happen during a race. It's something that will happen given enough time." Someone driving and not fully focused on controlling the vehicle will crash. It's just a question of when. Think about that the next time you're driving. Maybe if everyone did that we'd at least see it coming.
