I.

Back in middle school, while writing a book report on Ray Bradbury, I distinctly recall stumbling across a bit of information: Bradbury was traumatized after seeing a car accident as a young person, and refused to drive in his adult life, citing accident statistics as the most solid of justifications for his aversion.

Naturally, as a middle schooler, I was intrigued to find pretty much any strong, contrarian opinion that displayed a clear ethos behind it. As this fit the bill, I decided to file Bradbury’s line of thought in the back of my mind as a belief I might try on, and perhaps cite in relevant conversations… “of course, accident numbers are appalling,” I might say, without any real knowledge of what those numbers actually were.

Though this attitude obviously displays at least some shallowness, the particular belief ended up fitting me like a glove. A few years after the book report, I began driving instruction, an experience mostly dominated by the unhappy combination of anxiety and boredom. The unnaturalness of the affair was always pretty evident; the knowledge of my own shortcomings and that of every other driver I knew was always somewhere in my mind.

Fast-forward to the present day. While my own instinctive emotional discomfort behind the wheel has likely diminished somewhat (without disappearing altogether), my convictions, on the other hand, have only strengthened. Ray Bradbury was right, and, satisfyingly, my middle-and-high school selves were too! This satisfaction comes, of course, not merely from my own particular belief being maintained, but also from seeing it spread like the doctrines of a revolutionary. More and more, I encounter articles, groups, arguments; all to the effect that driving & cars are bad. They destroy city life, yes; they are dirty, yes; they are expensive; yes!; they are dangerous, yes.

With each new inspired thought against cars, I also have more dialectical clarity about my old thoughts about them, too. They feel unnatural? They are unnatural, an entirely disruptive thing introduced to the world, societally, personally…. Or again: The statistics are bad? Worse than you think, and not just statistics: you, James, will end up personally knowing someone killed in a car; you’ll know others maimed and injured forever.

And so on.

II.

As general anti-automobile sentiment spreads (though, I should note, is still far from dominant in our culture), and as my own convictions grow, it occurs to me to put down in writing what I have been ruminating upon ever since getting behind the wheel so many years ago (and which I think is something that rarely is brought up in discussions of driving). Driving doesn’t represent a merely generically unnatural sort of activity—an out-of-the-ordinary experience which takes some getting used to for certain kinds of people. Rather, I think we can make a bolder claim: driving is an activity in conflict with certain parts of human nature to the point that it inhibits good practical reasoning, and encourages a certain viciousness of the soul—and does both of these things with astonishing frequency.

This is not meant to be a philosophical essay, exactly, so despite the theses above, I don’t really intend to proceed syllogistically. Rather, I want to lay it out—what I feel, what we all feel when driving. To describe a web of experiences that take up an astonishing amount of daily life for most Americans—and in so doing, trace an outline of what I take to be the (sort of) insanity that is present.

I get into my car, place a bag in the backseat, and turn the key. I am running a little late for work (‘on-time’, I tell myself, due to once having a faster-than-average commute which I irrationally and stubbornly now expect every time, as if every car causing traffic is bound to stay home for my convenience). On account of this, I leisurely roll through a stop sign, and accelerate on every stretch of road (which inevitably leads to frustration when, within a couple minutes, I have to brake too suddenly for a red light).

Going down the road, I am focused on efficiency—but not so much that I am not able to turn on the radio, adjust the air, even glance at my phone to see if any notifications have appeared. Indeed, no matter how one wishes to focus on driving–either for the sake of safety or of swiftness—the simple fact remains that the human mind is far too adaptable to naturally keep up constant attention. The repetitive motions one makes, the scenery passing by—all becomes something essentially familiar and automatic; in the most extreme cases, even something in the background. (Thus, there is plenty of room for the diversions of modern life and of my own mind.)

Although distracted driving is never something I would call good, this kind of quasi-flow state one enters into in most drives of significant length is, perhaps, a necessary thing. The alternative, it seems to me, might be a kind of paralyzing awareness of every necessary decision one makes while driving—an awareness that a sudden jerk of the wheel could lead to life-altering catastrophe, the constant thought that one is moving at a speed far above what God designed the human body to handle, the deep realization of the strangeness of your every move as the simultaneous passenger and pilot of a metal box. If one is able to drive at all while keeping all these thoughts in mind at all times (and I doubt I could), one’s behavior on the road would be timid and uncertain to the point of dangerousness. No, far better to suspend our knowledge of these things as we navigate our commute.

I am fortunate that on my drive home these realizations stay far out of my head. This allows me, without much of a second thought, to make a split-second left turn, judging that I’ll make it before the oncoming car speeding towards me moves through the very same space…but without ever really being certain of this. It works out fine, the car whizzes by in my rearview mirror, and the decision is forgotten as quickly as it was made.

Despite this sort of forgetfulness that is all too easy to come by on the road, I find there are other things which tend to stick in one’s mind and memory far more than usual. On one stretch of road, approaching home, I am stuck behind a truly slow motorist who moments earlier had executed a (in my opinion) truly incompetent turn into my lane, forcing me to brake in rather perilous fashion. I judge, naturally, that this person is not only an inconvenience, but what’s more, an idiot! Not content just to make the judgment, I also say it out loud, hoping that (perhaps by some magical process) it will be heard. My reverie is broken; I am more irritated than I could ever possibly be meeting this stranger in person, whether they be a true idiot or merely (and more likely) a slightly timid driver.

What I discover in this moment of sudden awareness and focus is that I am not really myself on the road; in certain respects, I am acting as merely the mind of my car. The normal teloi of the human has been replaced—I do not function according to the ends of community, charity, even safety. The car has its own design with a very clear and evident end, its own desires. Insofar as these can be neatly summed up, we might describe it in terms of a teleology of speed.

Right before getting home, the spell is briefly broken. I am at a four-way stop. The person opposite me is visible through their windshield: a teenage girl perched behind the wheel in her family’s enormous SUV. How strange she looks!, I realize. She seems like a child thrust onto the adult-sized throne of a dysfunctional monarchy, or a baby bird that has wandered into the skull of a dinosaur. This discrepancy–the small, unremarkable, normal human attempting to casually maneuver the large, mechanical, unnatural object–is striking to me, but it is still a few seconds before the thought comes to mind that her situation is, in fact, completely identical to my own.

I set down my car on the street in front of my house, and I go inside.

III.

I do not expect or intend this narrative to perfectly describe a universal, everyday experience. Hopefully some of us are scrupulous enough to treat stop signs with respect, gentle enough to not succumb to road rage, and so on. But the phenomena described are, I think, much more widespread than anyone ought to be comfortable with. And I personally have experienced more of the above than I would have expected based on how I behave outside of my car. This fact disturbs me a little.

Perhaps more disturbing: having just written all of this, having just written of my feeling disturbed—I still know that within a couple days, given the frequency of my driving, I will put this all out of mind to get from point A to point B, and will feel fine doing so. There is, simply, no other option: the way our country is constructed means that, for most, cars are necessary.

Inevitably, though, there will be an accident (there is for almost everybody). It will happen suddenly and without warning. I will hit something, or someone will hit me, and any sense of control I have will instantly vanish. The feeling of safety and calm that I take for granted—that we all take for granted—most days on the road will be replaced by a sense of dread which, in the end, probably bears a closer relationship to reality. If I’m lucky, I will be able to walk away from the accident, eventually return to the road, even once more drive without thinking about it. If I’m unlucky…well, you know.

I do not mean to strike a tone of despair—as I noted earlier, I am pleased to see anti-automotive sentiment rising! Cincinnati is doing more for bike infrastructure, cars generally have gotten and are getting safer, people are advocating for better public transit, and so on. As with most closers of generally depressing pieces, it is also appropriate to say hopefully that we need to discuss ways of building a better culture and community, and to act based on those discussions. And I think we can do this! I believe a better future in this regard is possible and likely. I only hope it comes about before one of us—you, me, someone we know—dies, suddenly (like this ending), in the metal wreckage of a car.

James Rahner