August 2, 2006
YOU DON'T HAVE TO FEEL GUILTY THAT YOU HATE IT:
Study: Fewer Americans Like Driving, Cite Road Rage and Traffic (AP, August 02, 2006)
The biggest reasons for dreading the road: traffic and the behavior of other drivers. Only 3 percent point to high gas prices."Other drivers get on my nerves," said Steve Heavisides, a 45-year-old teacher from Vernon, Conn., who had just returned home from a short drive. "There was a women who could have gone right on red and she was just sitting there talking on her cell phone. People don't pay attention and that gets on your nerves."
About one in four drivers thinks of his or her car as "something special" instead of just a "means of transportation," according to a poll released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center. Nearly one in three thinks it has "a personality of its own."
Americans have been loving their cars for about a century, buying increasingly bigger, faster and more expensive cars while the rest of the world moves toward economy and efficiency. But the new poll suggests that driving is becoming more of a burden for many.
Note that the folks here who think their car is something special are the aberration, quite literally un-American.
Posted by Orrin Judd at August 2, 2006 3:12 PM
... while the rest of the world moves toward economy and efficiency ...
Is this a spoof?
If the average American ever went to a place where public transportation was the rule, they'd love their cars even more than they do now.
Note that driving is the burden, not the car. Automobiles have long been moving pleasure domes that offer trivial pleasures and provide a means to display status in much the same way as did Veblen's cane. Car companies know this and continue load their products with utter junk -- seats that adjust for those sitting in them for one and headlight windshield wipers-- inventing and then appealing to needs having little to do with getting around and much to showing away. There's a "mark" in marketing, and you're it.
This suggests that if mass transit on the scale that some dream about arrives, the same dynamic will obtain. It'll be like France, which has first-class seating even on the Metro for the better class of worker. Of course, the elite will continue to have private transport.
To summarize Calvin in a nutshell, man is a damn mess (hat tip to Norman MacLean).
Posted by: Ed Bush at August 3, 2006 8:55 AM