[lbo-talk] cars

[shag carpet bomb]

I highly recommend a read of Traffic, by the way. It is quite excellent. 
One of the things he talks about is the psychological effect of driving in 
a car. It becomes, to the driver, like a protective bubble, insulating 
people from the world around them - or so it seems. Among the many studies 
Vanderbilt cites on this, the most hilarious illustration is discussion of 
the way people act in their cars: as if no one can see them. They pick 
their nose, put on make up, masturbate, etc - and all often as if no one 
can see them. Studies also show how unnerved people are by violation of the 
privacy of car space when they aren't welcoming the intrusion at any rate.

This illusion of privacy is created by the engineering of cars themselves, 
but also by the speed. Once you start driving (or cycling) past 15 mph, you 
can no longer discern the faces of fellow road users. Thus, everything else 
out there is just another machine-bubble.

One of the reasons *some* drivers respond with rage to cyclists 
(purposefully trying to run them off the road, etc.) is that the cyclist 
reminds them that they are driving around 4000 lb machine that can kill 
them. Think about it: popular culture is replete with images of car crashes 
and their effects. Yet, we get in a car daily and drive them around and we 
have to forget how dangerous it can be to ourselves and to others.

In the US, the sight of a cyclist reminds the driver how vulnerable road 
users are. It's no longer about other machine-bubbles on the road, but ones 
with people in them and driving them. The people who react with aggression 
to cyclists - to the point of trying to harm them or driving aggressively 
around them -- are (to my mind, Vanderbilt doesn't say this exactly) people 
who are like abusers: when they see vulnerability in the person they are 
abusing, they want to hit them more.

The aggressive drivers will say it's because cyclists don't follow the 
rules. However, Vanderbilt points out that all car drivers break the rules 
every day. They drive over the speed limit, they drive unsafely around 
construction sites, they rarely come to a full stop at a stop sign, they 
speed up to go through yellow lights, the u-turn in the middle of streets, 
etc. I've forgotten the social-psychological term that he uses for this.

At any rate, Vanderbilt is fascinating on the psychology of driving and 
does  a great job summarizing the research of that fella who wrote the tome 
on the high cost of parking lots. Forgotten his name.