We’ve all seen people do some pretty bizarre human behavior in the street. Drivers stop in the middle of the road to read a sign, check a map, or have a conversation with someone on the sidewalk. Someone does 20 under because he’s lost when he could easily pull to the side of the road. Pedestrians saunter in crosswalks, somehow confident that the “Stop For Pedestrians” sign is legitimate protection from a daydreaming motorist. Parents let their children play on fairly major streets. Bicyclists—the same ones who, if you asked them, would say they have as much claim to the road as a car—run red lights and stop signs and fail to yield. People fail to signal and fail to comprehend center turn lanes. They talk on the phone while driving. They freeze at intersections, wait for a large opening in cross-traffic that will never come, and hold up traffic. And, on top of it all, every driver, regardless of how he drives, considers his driving to be best and appropriate and flawless and proper.
Though it seems that driving brings about a bizarre transformation, the reality is that these behaviors are fundamentally human. They are general, not specific.
A few weeks ago I went skiing at Black Mountain. I consider myself a competent skier, skilled enough to try all but the most difficult New England slopes. My mogul technique is poor but not so poor that I navigate every mogul field on my face. After one day there I had tried every trail and gotten a good feel for the mountain, so I started watching other skiers’ behavior. That’s when I began to notice that people ski and drive the same way. For example, I watched an instructor lead a very inexperienced skier in his 30s down a wide, rolling expanse towards the bottom of the mountain. He was practicing his wedge and his turns. Neither thought anything of skiing erratically crosswise, even though this wide expanse was the final portion of a run that began at the summit and would attract only skiers skilled enough to carry some speed to the base. Of course, every time I went by, I received dirty looks from the instructor and her student, as if my speed automatically indicated a lack of control. I couldn’t help but think of a Honda Element I was behind recently. The driver was trying to find a parking spot, which I knew not because he signaled, pulled over, and let the people behind him pass, but because he was driving 15 below the limit and darting towards the sidewalk every time he saw a potential opening.
The worst of it, though, were the people who reasoned that it would be acceptable to stop in the middle of a trail, remove their skis, and sit. The intersections of trails seemed to be a favorite place, and one mid-20s couple cuddled on a blind slope near the base of the mountain. One of them had stuck a ski pole in the snow to alert other skiers, but, unfortunately, the pole was not visible from more than10 feet away. I wondered where the ski instructor was and if she would ask them to move (but I’m pretty sure she was too worried about when people like me might ski briskly past her student).
We ski and drive this way not because skiing and driving have some bizarre psychological effect on us. On the contrary, skiing and driving simply happen to be two activities that reveal us for what we are: Often timid, often careless, and possessed of a delicately passive arrogance. It is not a violent arrogance, nor is it deliberately cruel. It is exactly the line of thinking that leads people like that Element driver to consider his need for a parking space greater than the peace of mind of the drivers behind him—drivers that have to anticipate his erratic stops and starts. When I passed that Element driver, he honked at me. And it is exactly the line of thinking that leads people to sit in blind areas on ski slopes. We forget that everything behind us exists. So the next time I see someone straddling two lanes on the highway, I won’t succumb to the urge to call him a “bad” driver. I’ll simply acknowledge a demonstration of fundamental human behavior, behavior that I am, doubtless, guilty of as well.
on March 22, 2007 at 4:27 pm Julian wrote:
My driving is the best and appropriate and flawless and proper, and I take offense to your implications.
on March 22, 2007 at 5:01 pm Julian again wrote:
I don’t think being oblivious of or apathetic to your surroundings is a fundamental human trait. There are some people who are, and those are the people whom I might call bad drivers. I do agree that it isn’t specifically a problem with their driving skill, and that they might be just as annoying to come across on a sidewalk, ski slope, or any public passage. I also agree that these traits are probably passive and not malicious. I just find it hard to believe that everybody is just as much of a “bad driver” as the next guy, depending merely on when I encounter them. Of course I’m far from perfect, and nobody consistently drives as though they were actually deaf and blind, but there must be some variation, just as with practically all of our traits.
on March 23, 2007 at 12:07 pm Clint wrote:
Certainly there is variation. However, the capability of “being oblivious of or apathetic to” one’s surroundings is fundamental. It manifests itself in various activities–driving, skiing, walking down a crowded sidewalk–but these activities are not themselves the source of the obliviousness.
Further, my point isn’t that people are constantly oblivious and apathetic, but that the obliviousness and apathy we see in other people when they drive is not caused by driving. Many people, when they describe or complain about bad driving, present the driver as a person otherwise attentive gripped by obliviousness, as if the car or the act of driving is the equivalent of demonic possession (by a very flighty lower-level demon of course).
In fact, obliviousness is secondary to passive arrogance in the mixture that produces what we call “bad drivers”. If if you disagree with what I said about the fundamental human capability for obliviousness, it remains that we tend to think our behavior right and proper when skiing, or driving, or doing something similar. When I said above that I am sure I am guilty of the same thing, I had in mind not the times that I was fumbling down the roadway, doing 15 in a 30, but the times that I have been tailgating a person doing 30 in a 30, having convinced myself that my desire to do 5 over is best and right and proper.