Drivers Don't Suck; Driving Makes You Suck

“…an overwhelming majority [of drivers] - 81 percent - remain supremely confident in their own abilities behind the wheel.”
— study performed by Michelin North America, paraphrased

“Anyone driving slower than you is an idiot and anyone driving faster than you is a maniac.”
— George Carlin

When I was eighteen years old, less than a year after getting my driver’s license, I was at fault in a collision. The crash itself was mercifully minimal - no injuries, neither vehicle was totaled. This is only important because I didn’t show up to my court date and that’s how my license was suspended. Truly a model citizen.

To get my license back I had to attend traffic school. For any Europeans and good drivers out there, traffic school is an all-day course concerning how not to find yourself at fault in a collision.

I was, with no exaggeration, the only student whose license was not revoked for drunk driving. The instructor sat us in a circle and asked, “What did they get you for?”—meaning, what did you do to incur the traffic stop that led to your DUI? One man claimed he got caught in a sudden rainstorm and pulled over to wait it out - at which point a street lamp fell directly onto his truck. He also happened to have had a few drinks.

Despite my unearned sense of superiority (I ended up in the same room after all), I did learn something vitally important in traffic school: Dangerous driving maneuvers (speeding, weaving through traffic, tailgating, passing on the right in a BUS LANE that ENDS IN 100 FEET what are you DOING) only save you about a minute of time for every thirty miles you drive.

Please take a moment to really think about that. 60 seconds for every 30 miles (~50km).

This fact was so astonishing to me that I dismissed it as a white lie, some cherry-picked study to encourage reckless drivers to settle down. But I see the evidence all the time now. How often do you get cut off by someone and watch them peel away, only to end up right next to them at the next intersection? How often are you the one sheepishly waiting at the red light?

I was liberated by this idea. It gave me permission to respect other drivers and relax behind the wheel. I started songwriting during my commutes rather than monologuing about what I planned to do to the parents of people who “wronged” me on the road. This part may or may not be strictly true, but I also imagine I burn less gasoline and change my oil and tires less frequently. And, since my commute is only ten miles, I can leave my house one minute earlier and arrive at the same time as before.

If I think too much about car-centric infrastructure and the automotive industry I need a paper bag to breathe into, but here's another mind-boggling statistic:

There are 281 million personal vehicles registered in the United States for a human population of 333 million, including children. Each house in my neighborhood has a two-car garage and a driveway just as wide, yet every inch of curb is still used for street parking.

And somehow Americans are appalled to find themselves stuck in traffic. We don’t get upset at the zoning laws that force us to live too far away from our places of work to walk or bike. We don’t get upset at the lack of public transportation that leads us to take on the costs of loan repayments, gas, maintenance, tires, insurance, and parking.

We get mad at each other, don’t we?

In a soundproofed cabin with tinted windows it’s real easy to imagine other vehicles as soulless automatons who exist solely to inconvenience you. It takes conscious effort to remember that there’s a human being behind every wheel (especially for anyone who needs a step ladder to get into your lifted truck, but I fear those people may be beyond help). And oddly enough I have traffic school to thank for that perspective. You never know what’s going to radicalize you, I guess.

Remember kids: jaywalking is not a crime, cyclists are not your enemy, and if you drive a lifted truck in the suburbs you fell hard for propaganda and I pity you.