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Had my first driving lesson today
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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Fuck Cars
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Preface: My primary method of transport is by bike if I can help it. I hate cars and everything they represent.
When I get behind the wheel of a car, it's like something in my brain flips and I notice my behaviour changes. I become more annoyed, aggravated, and impatient. I don't know what it is, but something about being surrounded by a steel cage that can explode up to 100km/h at a moment's notice makes you feel invincible.
A large part of the problem comes from the design of the road. To accommodate as many cars as possible the road is built to be gigantic, and when you're driving a car this makes you feel like you're safe to maneuver even at the expense of everybody else.
I think if we started designing cities properly, focusing first on pedestrians then bikes then buses etc, we'd end up with an urban environment where motorists do not feel as comfortable throwing their ego around and so will quiet down and behave.
A co-worker had the hypothesis that it (being more prone to anger/aggression) is because your car is like an extension of your house, in a way it's a bit like your moving home, so you feel more vulnerable and it makes you much more nervous about everything outside of it.
This explanation makes sense for me, but I never liked driving so who knows.
Where I live now, in the Nordics, I get really agitated when I see people (in cars) standing in the middle of crossings and blocking T-junctions to smaller roads. Unlike in the Netherlands, and probably most countries, you can tell that there is way less time spent with an actual instructor (not claiming Dutch drivers are perfect, people in general are not flawless, let a lone in a high speed box on rollers). Another thing that annoys me is the amount of people on their phones while driving, it is insane. I didn't observe it like this in the Netherlands, but that I might just have missed this. Mobile phones must be the most dangerous addiction if we can't even put them away when doing potentially dangerous activities.
I completely recognise the experiences you have while driving. My primary transport is public transport. I love it as I can chill and let my mind just relax a bit, but we have access to a car, and, indeed, when using it (when I snoozed a few too many times), everything is upsetting (the issues in the first paragraph are in general bothering me though) and their is no chill time when driving to work. I like driving on a holiday, cause you get to see new things and get to drive scenic routes, but as a means of everyday transport it is the worst.
I can give the people here some slack. The streets are terrible, even in the urban space. And it does indeed help a lot to have guidance and good structural rules on how to use the roads (like roundabouts).