Thinking on two wheels
I am also a cyclist and a driver. I do about the same number of miles (only 1500) on each, the only difference being that the Government charges me four hundred pounds, plus most of the fuel cost, for the latter privilege. The roads have become modern jungle trail, where all the animals fight for access and supremacy. We all take the dry level surface for granted, though of course this is a wholly artificial state of affairs, resulting from human ingenuity and application.
How humans from previous centuries would have been amazed not only by the sophistication of the system of roads and motorways, but also at the number and speeds of the mechanical contraptions travelling over them, often in long, frustrating, time-wasting queues, with all their attendant noise and fumes, far removed from the more 'natural' ones of an horse-drawn era.
We have become accustomed to physical speed - every one seems to be in a hurry to get somewhere other than where they are. This is likely to have had a profound psychological effect on the human species, encouraging dissatisfaction and impatience. Irritability seems to be the underlying emotion of all drivers, everyone thinking they are 'primus inter pares', having right of way and god help those who frustrate it.
Cyclists it must be said, often find themselves at the receiving end of these frustrations, as unavoidably they take up space on the road and travel at a speed determined by legs rather than engine. Unlike the driver who expends almost no energy to go faster or slower, to change direction, to go up or down or even to remain upright and fixed to the road, the cyclist works hard to do all of these.
Despite the former ease, it is amazing how reluctant drivers can be to turn the steering wheel or apply the brakes, and when forced to do so, often resulting in loud objection from horn or voice box. There is in every motorist it seems, an angry devil only too willing and eager to get out.
The last hundred years has been the epoch of the motorised vehicle. It has shrunk distance, encouraged travel and thus altered almost every aspect of social interaction, paradoxically actually making it worse.
People in metal boxes at speed do not relate so intimately with either fellow travellers or with the environment through which they pass. It is an introverted and selfish experience, focused not on a journey but on the destination, missing all that comes between. In going further and faster, the here and now is jettisoned for the there and then, which takes just as long in coming, if it ever does.
Better to travel less far, preferably on two wheels, and see and breathe the moment.
Motor Vehicle Red Lights
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