Driving me mental!

(from April 17, 2007)

I know this is not a socially acceptable position here in North America where car is king, but I have to say it ... I HATE DRIVING!!!! I really do. I think this realization came upon me gradually, but I've come to notice that this is very true in almost every circumstance. It's hard for me to believe now, considering that back when I was a teenager growing up in Edmonton, where one could get their learner's permit at 14 and full license at 16, I got my learner's permit on my 14th birthday and my driver's license on my 16th, in the morning before going to school. I just couldn't wait for that independence and freedom.
It was actually fairly pleasant driving in Edmonton - the city is, historically speaking, in it's infancy. It was built with cars in mind, spread out over a large area, wide open roads, not too many other drivers, always a place to park, and a nice spacious one at that. My experience driving in Alberta (keep in mind Calgary's great boom hadn't happened yet and the nightmarish traffic jams were a thing of the future) could not have possibly prepared me for the onslaught of stress-inducing, soul-poisoning torture that is driving in Eastern Canada and the US. Developments in this region are several hundred years old. The major cities here were built in the days of horse and carriage, and street trolleys. NOT HUMMERS!!!! But people still try to squeeze them and other retardedly impractical large useless vehicles through the narrow cobblestone laneways of Old Montreal; why cars are even allowed in these historical areas is beyond my comprehension. But even newer parts of these cities were not designed to handle the massive volume of automobile traffic. So as a result the city of Montreal has, in its infinite wisdom, hastily carved out hideous Autoroutes all over the place to try to move traffic more efficiently; so now instead of a nice clean network of streetcars carrying people around in an orderly manner, (like in Amsterdam and other civilized cities around the world) many Montrealers are forced to navigate an ill-conceived, twisted mess of concrete (which thanks to corrupt half-assededness sometimes comes crumbling down: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/09/30/overpass-collapse.html ), with narrow lanes, dangerous merges, unpredictable left-side exits, and the world's surliest asshole drivers -- god forbid guy X let guy Y in front of him because it could cost him MAYBE 0.3 seconds from his overall travel time, even though guy Y has no choice but to cut across 5 lanes within about 10 metres to get to his desired exit because he just merged onto the highway at a very steep angle and his exit is on the bloody left side (with no prior signage, of course). Not to mention parking here, (if you are lucky enough to find any) which is really freakin' expensive whether you legitimately pay out the nose or are smacked with a nasty ticket (twice the price of Toronto -- we've got to pay for snow removal somehow). The parking signs are so confusing it's almost sport on the part of the city administration (like the casino -- odds are always stacked in favour of the dealer!).
I can happily say that I don't own a car, so I don't have to deal with this shit the vast majority of the time. It blows my mind that people complacently subject themselves to upwards of 4 hours a day of infuriating bumper-to-bumper commutes, inching along breathing everyone else's toxic gas swamp of idling motor fumes. And they think it's ok. People think it's OK to live like this!! Everyone thinks it's the ultimate freedom and self-expression to drive a car. The message from the automobile manufacturers and gas companies have permeated our consciousness our entire lives -- images of a sleek, sexy, aerodynamic machine sailing along a beautiful winding country road ... notice there always seems to be absent the COPIOUS HOARDS OF OTHER CARS which are all too present and constantly in your way everywhere you go in REAL LIFE???!!!
Then there's long distance driving -- on undivided highways at the mercy of overtired, maniacal truckers. But that aside, did anyone ever consider that the human body is NOT MEANT to sit motionless in one position for hours and hours on end. Ever notice that your eyelids are drooping and your head feels heavy, and you start to drift off to sleep (and off the road if you don't catch yourself in time). It's not really because you were tired in the first place. Maybe you were, but that's not the point -- the point is that because you're sitting there like a lump staring out at endless monotony, the basic primal forces in your body think "gee, I'm not eating, drinking, walking, or propagating the species, so I must be sleeping" and subsequently shuts your whole system down. This is especially a problem now that cars are practically on auto-pilot in every respect -- power steering so effective that you can drive with your thumbs, automatic transmission, feather-light signal controls ... Night-time long-distance driving in modern vehicles is more conducive to sleep than anything else. Which is not particularly safe.
The only time in recent history that I've truly enjoyed driving is when I met up with Martin in San Francisco last year and his friend from Palo Alto lent us his 1980-something Volkswagen Vanagon. We took it all around the Bay, through the mountains to the Pacific and back along the East side. It felt like driving an old bus -- no power steering, stiff clutch and brake pedals, and I really had to crank the stick shift to get it into gear. It took some serious muscle to maneuver that thing along steep curvy mountain roads, and even changing lanes on the major highways took effort. It was a nice workout and I could really feel it the next day.
The human body is meant to walk and move around on its own, yet for some reason the complete opposite is the ultimate measure of success in North America ... the less you have to walk, the better off you are. And people wonder why they're overweight and miserable. Martin and I went on a beautiful 70km bike ride one day through the hilly Prince Edward Island countryside a couple of years ago, and by the time we got back to town at 9pm I was all ready to go another 70k ... yet after 10 minutes in a car my back hurts, my legs cramp and I'm getting sharp stomach pains from the constant unrelenting stress.
So yeah, all of you diehard drivers out there inching along in your precious motorized tin cans, surrounded in gridlock by everyone else in theirs, leave some space on your right so I can get by you on my bike!