In the last day and a half I’ve travelled some 520 miles – from Wales to Bexhill and back to Cheshire. It’s been peculiar as for once I was in a car and being driven rather than driving. First by my cousin and then by my brother in law.
I can’t read comfortably in a car so I had chatted and, mostly, watched the world go by. And the world was mainly vehicles, which we either passed or were passed by. Each with one person (very occasionally there were two) immersed in his or her own private – but actually very visible – world. People eating, drinking, on the phone, singing, laughing (on their own...) gazing grimly out of the window, clutching on to steering wheels, (often in a position which seemed guaranteed to cause them serious neck problems). All convinced, just like us of course, that they were unobserved and able to do exactly as they liked.
There’s a kind of head in the sand syndrome that seems to affect us in our cars, vans and wagons. An ‘I can see you but you can’t see me’ belief. We all know that road rage often happens as a result of some people confusing their personal and public space. I wonder too if it happens because sometimes, inadvertently, we catch someone glancing at us in our ‘private’ world – and respond with anger at being ‘spied on’.
Cars are very public spaces, even when they feel private. Remember that next time you sit picking your nose at a set of traffic lights.
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