| SATISFYING AN APPETITE FOR FAST DRIVING |
| Published in The Monterey County Herald, November 28, 2004 |
I consider myself a safe, responsible driver. I'm sober; I'm courteous. I stay within the lines. I yield to pedestrians. I “watch out for the other guy.” I don't run red lights or stop signs, not on purpose anyway. I'm not what you would call a reckless or an angry driver. Unlike some hot-heads out there, I keep my horn silent and my comments and my fingers to myself.
I do have one weakness, though. I drive the way I eat: aggressively, voraciously, and with a lot of gas and gusto. Thankfully, I'm not as messy behind the wheel as I am at the dinner table; otherwise we'd all be in serious trouble.
Time was, before I had my license, when I thought a person needed a practical reason to speed. Once I sank my chops into the straightaway and tasted of its pleasures, I discovered that driving had more to do with power and self-importance than simply getting to work on time. Racing to beat the clock, for example, infuses the daily commute with an adventure and exhilaration that would be missing had I left the house a few minutes earlier, and transforms even the most pointless excursion into an urgent mission.
You would think, considering how I sweat and tremble whenever I see those flashing lights pull up in my rear view mirror, that I would learn to chew the road more slowly, instead of wolfing it down all at once. (Twice, a cop let me off with only a warning, when by all rights, I should have been fined up the wazoo and/or hauled off to traffic school.) Fear of the consequences has, in fact, scared the wind out of my sails over the years and persuaded me to reign in some of that “gusto”. Apprehend me, and I am a model of humility and contrition. But the system can never quell my desire to devour the road as though it were a slab of deep dish pizza with a double helping of mushrooms and black olives. Because behind my meek exterior lies a force that longs to break loose---to soar unimpeded by rules, by slow moving traffic, by anything that compromises MY momentum, challenges MY independence, or clutters MY personal landscape.
Surely, there has no fault overtaken me but what is common to many other drivers. It’s no coincidence that auto manufacturers have appealed, not our restraint, but to our love of speed, by naming their dream machines after swift, powerful animals: the cougar, the mustang, the jaguar, and the eagle, to name just a few. And let's not overlook such ego enhancers as "Firebird", "Stealth" and "Intrepid." Think about it. How many “Slugs” have you seen on the road? How many “Aardvarks?”
We may not all be speeders. But most of us are, in one way or another, servants of our respective natures. Human nature doesn’t obey protocol, nor does it take kindly to external intervention. There are some drivers who like to tailgate; some who cut out in traffic without looking; some who hog the road or bully other drivers. Far too many pilot their vehicles like flight simulators, refusing to acknowledge that there are any real people or objects on the other side of that screen we call a windshield.
However, before we point our fingers at other drivers' foibles, we need to honestly examine our own natures. The more I learn about myself, the more I understand why we need laws, as well as officers to implement them. But laws cannot reform us. Laws can only reveal our faults, show us where we need to be, and protect us from ourselves and from each other.
True government has to begin with me, and with you. And it's not for the hungry or the faint of heart.