The strangest things we do are also the things we think least about—for example, drinking cows’ milk, handing our children over into the care of paid strangers, going to gyms, wearing neckties, enjoying war as spectator sport, and shaving. Life would probably halt if we thought very much about these and many other curious aspects of our existence. But the strangest of all is our peculiar habit of travelling around in motorized ox-carts.
The crude device known as the automobile is quite extraordinarily ill-suited to its purpose. It is unsafe at any speed for any other road-user it strikes. It costs great piles of money to buy or lease. Though this money is often borrowed, it then spends much of its life depreciating in a gutter or in an expensive parking lot. When not in use, it obstructs other such vehicles. It is dirty, unpleasantly noisy and dangerous both to its users and to those who share the highways with it. The new electric type appears cleaner, but merely transfers its noxious fumes to the power stations which charge its batteries. It compels much of the Western world to depend for its transport fuel on appalling Middle Eastern despots. It cannot function safely in fog or heavy snow. Any driving test that truly eliminated dangerous or incompetent drivers would exclude millions from the driving seat and be commercially disastrous for car makers. The companies that make it are surprisingly unprofitable and repeatedly run into financial trouble. It is physically backward and irrational, having far more “rolling resistance” than more advanced land transport methods such as trains and streetcars. I believe the friction between rubber tire and paved road is around 30 times that between steel wheel and steel rail, greatly increasing fuel consumption. Prolonged use of it is correlated with heart disease from lack of exercise, and with lower back pain from the posture required to drive.
The car produces in its users a number of strange and irrational behaviors. The most bizarre of these (I have often observed it) is an implacable desire to park within a few feet of one’s intended destination. This means the driver spends long minutes finding such a space—when he and his passengers could have arrived much earlier by parking further away and walking a small distance. It is as if the car has become a garment which the driver fears to remove. Then there is the personality change that overcomes the mildest of men or women, when placed behind a steering wheel. We have all seen it, embarrassing and perplexing. An apparently gentle and level-headed person, thwarted in traffic, snarls terrible threats, pounds the dashboard with rage and reveals an astonishingly wide knowledge of profane terms.