Control Freaks

Everyone knows that the car you drive is considered to be a personal statement. That’s why there are like 600 different models of cars on the road available in a rainbow of colours. And then there is the constellation of overpriced aftermarket parts with which to rice up your ride.

I’ve being doing a lot of sitting in my car in traffic lately and it has come to my attention that how you drive your car is also a bold statement of who you are - perhaps more telling than how you actually behave in actual interpersonal interactions.

Perhaps the biggest challenge of public transit has always been to convince people to leave their cars at home and they admit that it’s not easy. People love their expensive planet killing cars in large part because it’s the one place where they can feel that they are in control - of the music, the temperature, the speed and ultimately, where they are going. You don’t get this in a shared home, in the office, at the mall, outdoors and for the most part in life. This is probably also why savings aside the HOV lanes are pretty empty – the daily commute is the one place you don’t have to make compromises.

To come back on topic in the safe feeling and empowering environment of their automobile people should be expected to act more like how they really feel rather than how they think they are supposed to behave. In most places you might expect this to mean a lot of aggressive drivers and as a former bicycle courier I can tell you that you do get a lot of them and they tend to drive the same types of cars and minivans - lots of psychopaths out there in minivans.

In the GTA this has helped me to feel some sympathy for my fellow residents. Probably 80% of the drivers in the GTA drive like madmen and madwomen when they are on the highway but then when they get off the highway on the streets they drive like the absolute last thing in the world they would ever want to do is get where they are going and out of the car back into a world totally out of their control.