Carlton Reid posts some enlightening excerpts from “Guidelines For the Pastoral Care of the Road“, a document issued by Vatican Publishing House:
When driving a vehicle, special circumstances may lead us to behave in an unsatisfactory and even barely human manner.
The domination instinct, or the feeling of arrogance, impels people to seek power in order to assert themselves. Driving a car provides an easy opportunity to dominate others. Indeed, by identifying themselves with their car, drivers enormously increase their own power.
The free availability of speed, being able to accelerate at will, setting out to conquer time and space, overtaking, and almost subjugating other drivers, turn into sources of satisfaction that derive from domination.
Cars tend to bring out the primitive side of human beings, thereby producing rather unpleasant results.
May I paraphrase? Cars are a vehicle for the Devil to take hold of human beings and spur their darker nature to set free from the reins of civility.
I leave you with the Ninth Commandment of the Christian Driver:
IX. On the road, protect the more vulnerable party.
I see this power and domination thing quite regularly on my commute. It most often manifests itself as a needless overtaking manoeuvre. It goes like this; You are pedalling along in the traffic keeping up without too much trouble when a car comes up behind you. You can feel the driver thinking “It’s a bike, I’ve GOT to overtake” then you hear the vroooom of the engine as he swooshes past. This is immediately followed by the squeal of brakes as the aforementioned driver is forced to stop in front of you because there is nowhere to go. I doubt if the driver ever appreciates the absurdity of the situation.
All too true Terry – and, when approaching a junction with waiting traffic at the line, what about the ones who think “It’s a bike, I must get out of this junction before she/he reaches me” thereby almost sending you over the handlebars – and their bonnet (only to pull in a second or so later, half on pavement, half on road, to go to the shop for cigarettes).
Still, I suppose it could be “what bike” as they help you pick pieces of your pride and joy up off the tarmac…
it is not uncommon to see a license plate that reads 666