Honestly what is it about driving that turns people into such self-entitled cunts?
Modest mouse has a whole song about it.
What's it called?
I think it's called invisible
Not sure it’s just limited to driving. Lots of self entitled cunts everywhere.
Lol, true!
This comic is why I decided to move out of the city. I've sacrificed a number of things, but it was worth it to get away from this crap on the daily.
I've lived/worked in a few large US cities, and have absolutely no interest in ever doing that again. (Fuck DC, especially. What a dumpster fire - once missed a turn and it added 2 hours to my drive because of how bad the traffic is. I should've driven over the median).
You're safe in your box and it dehumanises all the other road users a bit
I think people find driving stressful because they struggle to operate machinery more than they are comfortable to admit
I've had this theory for a while that it's an Id/Ego thing. My very basic understanding of those two things is that Ego is what the world sees and Id is all your internal unfiltered behaviour. I reckon that when you get into a car, that car becomes what the world sees and you, as the consciousness safely inside it, instinctively revert to being more Id led. You feel safe and enclosed so you stop filtering your behaviour the way you would walking down the street.
As someone who has driven in different countries though, terrible behaviour is absolutely not limited to the UK. In France I experienced drivers who actually go out of their way to ruin your day. In the Middle East it was an almost complete lack of caring at all and a comically enthusiastic attitude to risk taking. In Greece everyone seemed to be ok with today being the day they die on the road and in Argentina people just pointed their cars in a direction and hoped for the best!
You've described my driving experience and that of friends/family to a "T".
Can't pay me to drive in France (well, outside of cities, maybe).
Britain... Well there can be some inconsiderate knobs, but in somewhere like London it's as bad as Boston or New York, maybe worse in it's own way due to the city being 1000 years old, with lots of growing pains. (Which is why Boston is a good comparison - they have similar organic growth).
Nah, the id/ego/superego thing was made up by Freud. Freud was a late 19th century crackhead who thought that everyone was in love with one of their parents. We do not listen to Freud. We do not trust Freud.
It can still be a useful model for understanding how we behave, sometimes.
He may have been a coke fiend with some wonky ideas, but sometimes, some of them can still be useful.
If nothing else, the idea of how ego plays a part here makes sense, and how we probably think of the car as an extension of our body.
Number of times I was almost run over in a crosswalk by someone blowing a red light:
Getting cursed out by the dickhead running the red is a great experience. #vancouver
"I need to park here...But get that walking stick away from my wanky vinyl wrap!"
This is exactly my experience when taking my child to school on the bike. I've literally seen every issue and had people saying we shouldn't be on the road from their unnecessarily massive car, with one kid in, parking on the no parking areas and hitting 40 on the school street beforehand where we have roughly 900 children at the primary school (ages 4 to 11), so not like they should be careful or anything with their killing machines...
That is pretty much exactly what my street looks like - except it's missing the bunch of "Apple Maps" users taking a detour down our residential street at 40mph (rather than one of the two parallel main roads), because there were some roadworks round the corner for two weeks, half a year ago.
When you have to spend about 1/3 of your wages to look like what you think is successfull I imagine you have to inject a lot of your ego into it.
"This thing costs me £750+ per month, you can fucking bet I'm going to draw attention to myself"
if you're a cyclist you just can't win lol
I always cycle on the pavement. it's less busy than the road most of the time and if there's someone in front of me I ring my bell to alert them just in case
If I'm walking on the pavement and a cyclist rings their bell to make me get out of their way, I'm gonna get mad
I know cars suck. But you're meant to cycle on the road - You're not supposed to cycle on the pavement. I don't care if you do if the road is horrible, fair play, but ringing your bell at me? It's my right of way, so no thanks
My feeling is that unless there is a bike lane you should go on the pavement. You're not going to hit a pedestrian, not if you've been careful, and the roads are just not set up for cyclists.
However if there is a cycle lane, and as long as cars aren't parked in it, you should be using it.
That last one isn't wrong, though it'd be ideal to first make the roads safe for bikes.
On a residential street like that there is zero reason not to be on the road, especially if there are cars on the pavement, but I don't really mind cyclists being on the pavement if it's a busy A road.
There's a road near me with a speed limit of 50 and I regularly see cyclists on that road. It's insane that they're risking their life to be on a road when there's a perfectly good pavement right next to them and there's never anyone on the pavement. No one wants to take a walk along a road with a 50 mph speed limit.
Anyone who tells people not to bike on the sidewalk, and who owns a car, deserves to have it magically explode right then and there. And I hope they're driving it when they do.
A kid on their bike on the pavement is not really a threat imho
I've been hit by kids on bikes. if you have average able bodied as per work safety regulations strength you can probably pick up the whole bike along with the kid. even if not its not much worse than slipping on ice. The one time I had a kid crash in to me and the parent was not combatative about it I picked up the whole bike and turned to put it on the other side of me and the parent just apologized and said he hopes the kid won't expect him to do that now. now if it was an electric fatbike then no, not happening.
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Have chat and a natter. Talk about anything and everything that's not political!
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