If you want to reveal someone’s true character, get them behind a steering wheel. For some people, driving is a peaceful experience — a chance to tootle about their day. For others, it is a cause for scarlet-faced anger, fat-fist waving, and tailgating at the stopping distance of a grasshopper’s hiccup. These attitudes can expose our deep-rooted personality traits. Cart imitates life.
It works both ways — what happens behind the wheel can feed itself back into our everyday existence. The road teaches through experience. We mingle with people outside our usual circle, all while hurtling along at — let’s be honest — 80+ mph. For some of us, driving is the only time that we hold our lives in our own hands. Given all that, we can’t help but pick up a few things.
Example time: I’ve learnt an important lesson from angry drivers. Each impatient beep of the horn used to make me blush, shake and question every life decision I had made. Then I had a realisation: these driving divas don’t care about my journey. These Mario Karters don’t care whether my kids make it to nursery. After all, they’re not driving my car.
What’s more — and this is the bit that hit me — I’m not driving theirs. I’m not giving a second thought to their journey. It turns out I’m pretty damn selfish too — I have plenty of my own Pillock Driver moments. And I guess that’s okay. We’re all on our own journeys.
“We’re all on our own journeys” — boy is that some cringe-worthy stuff. However driving gives it a solid context: we are all literally on our own journeys. To the shops, to work, to visit our sick parents.
It’s a useful reminder, both on and off the road.