It's About Time

Cars and People, People and Cars by Suzanne M. Schweikert M.D. Copyright 2003 All Rights Reserved Comments, thoughts, and personal experiences on time related topics are welcome. Email: Dr.Schweikert@WritersMonthly.com

I have a confession. It seems I have developed an unusual attachment to my car. I do not mean this in a materialistic or even a sentimental way. It’s rather more like an identity crisis. I first noticed this while attempting to get some exercise. In my efforts to keep my running pace up for more than a few blocks, I have learned to have a particular goal or destination to run to. On this particular day, it seemed like a good idea to cross the street, as my destination was on the other side. It just so happened that I was making my way down a busy five lane highway, one that I frequently drive on. This is when I noticed it.

Glancing over my left shoulder, I looked up briefly, as if a rear view mirror would magically appear. Silly, I thought. Not enough sleep, perhaps. And then I carefully, but decisively, moved myself into the first lane of traffic, and kept running. There, between the painted lines, I was just like any other car. Only I wasn’t.

I was faring rather well, shifting myself over one lane at a time, much as a car would do, and glancing behind me to time my lane changes appropriately. I spent a few minutes in that first lane, only one in the second lane, and then quite a while in the third, which was one of those any-man’s lanes, surrounded by double yellow lines on either side. It was at this point that another car (spoken only like a person who thinks they are a car), reminded me that I was in over my head.

The SUV (of course) was coming at me head on, its left blinker beating wildly, like a vein pulsating on an enemy’s forehead, signifying a life and a purpose within. The SUV did not slow down as it approached me, and at one point it began to speed up. Just as I was about to take my chances by swerving myself into oncoming traffic, the SUV veered across the two lanes I had just traversed, and bounded into a driveway, going at least sixty. At this moment, I saw the whites of his (the driver’s) eyes, and I knew that he had seen mine.

I laughed nervously. Of course he wasn’t going to hit me. He had sped up so he could turn left before the oncoming cars reached him. But my world had momentarily tipped. I felt naked, blind and deaf without my tons of steel and air bags (skeleton and fat), my rearview mirrors (optical nerves), stereo system (auditory canals), and antilock brakes (neuromuscular junctions). I was like an animal who took a wrong turn in the jungle, and could easily be stepped on by a large, unobservant herbivore.

Shaken, but not completely swayed, I crossed the next two lanes more resolutely, not lingering as long as I had on the other side of the street. I was nearing an intersection and, miracle of the jungle, a stoplight. I stopped to stretch my legs, and to watch the behavior of a fellow runner. Unlike me, he ran up to the light, waited patiently for it to change, and then crossed in the crosswalk. He ran straight across all five lanes in under 30 seconds, an act which had taken me the better part of eight minutes and a near death experience to accomplish. His was a clean vector connecting two points, not a random negotiation with destiny.

And that’s when I realized it. Maybe people who drive a lot, like me, go about life thinking and behaving as if we are cars. Perhaps our interactions with other folks, and with strangers in particular, have taken on the personality quirks of motor vehicles. It seemed that, while running, I had behaved as if I were in a car. And yet, without the accelerating power, blinkers and horns, I was unable to function in the car’s world.

But the real question, I believe, is how well do cars function in the human world? Why are they so un-human? Why do they not express the emotional signals to other cars that could avert much disappointment and disaster.

It seems sad that cars can’t smile or wave at each other. We haven’t allowed them to evolve into a higher species of vehicle, based on a Herbie The Love Bug prototype. We might happily watch the anthropomorphic Chevron cars talk about their favorite flavors of gasoline, but when we get in our own cars, we become less than human ourselves.

So I wonder, if we did make our cars more human like (or even animal like), would it make our driving more human as well? If we had big puppy dog eyes and noses on the front of our cars (like the old smiling PSA airplanes) and wagging tails on our rear bumpers, would drivers pay more attention to one another, or care more about the lives within?

A nervous driver could signal these emotions by putting her tail between her wheels, giving other drivers the signal to steer clear. Someone in a hurry could open his cars’ eyes wide and point its’ tail straight up in the air, letting everyone know to let him through. And, most useful of all, a person on their cell phone could signal this distraction by shutting the cars’ eyes tightly, and letting the tail do loopity-loops.

I don’t know if any of this would encourage us to drive more like the human beings we purport ourselves to be, rather than hiding behind our machines. But for now, I am just concentrating on making my pedestrian behavior a bit less car-like. I have found it is easier to change lanes in life when you know you are not a car.

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