Treaty

I know I wrote an entry like this a little while ago called "Decadence," but after yesterday, I have a renewed passion for the subject of speed. I was coming home from vacation yesterday, the Monday of a long weekend, on an extremely crowded and heavily travelled highway. My minor distaste for speeding and dangerous driving during this trip crossed from distaste into the realm of straight-up disgust. The roads we were travelling, while not terribly dangerous themselves, are nonetheless small mountain  highways with winding passages, making for dangerous passing and turning the annoyance of reckless driving into a serious hazard. I actually could not handle how fast and aggressively people were driving, my own family members included. My family members (with the exception of my grandmother and myself who are afraid of the newfangled automobile, altogether), while uniformly intelligent, drive stupidly fast. I tell them this regularly, but I, to my genuine surprise, am on the outside in this situation. I, being the one who really couldn't care how fast I get somewhere, so long as I get there with my spine, face and spleen in tact, am the one looked at as sort of a cute relic. I'm an icon of good-hearted derision with a touch of pity thrown in for good measure. This is something I just do not understand because I am positive that I am right. 

On three separate occasions during this particular drive, my father and I were almost run off the road by aggressive, reckless, irresponsible driving. And on more than three occasions, I white-knuckled the door handle and closed my eyes as the car I was travelling in pulled out into a passing lane, ripping by cars already going well over the speed limit. I just don't get it! Why were we all going so fast, and more confusingly, why did we keep leapfrogging?! We're all going to the same god damned place! What the fuck?! I tell my family when we get to a rest stop, that this self-defeating, go-nowhere race that we've been in for the last five hours is well on it's way to becoming one of the saddest, most maddening, terrifying spectacles I've ever experienced. They (being the fast-driving leap-froggers) tell me that to drive too cautiously is just as much of a hazard driving recklessly, and that to be able to drive safely in such aggressive traffic, one must themselves become more aggressive, lest that jerk you passed a few miles back gain the upper hand. 

Um...what? That may/may not be the worst logic I've ever heard! It's a classic example of a Hobbesian race to the bottom. We all want to ensure our own individual safety, so we alter our behaviour (Read, drive more aggressively) in order to secure it. What we constantly, tragically and pathetically fail to realize is that, while in pursuit of our own, individual safety, we collectively make the road far less safe for everyone. If everyone drives more aggressively to consistently match or exceed the aggressiveness of other drivers, no one is getting any safer. If anything, we're just moving toward danger at a much greater speed. This is the same self-defeating logic that initiates and sustains arms races and competitive consumption. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again (and possibly again)- slow the fuck down! The time you save (negligible at best) by speeding and driving recklessly on a road trip is nothing compared to the enormous risk that you're putting yourself and other drivers at. Is a 4 minute advantage over another vehicle worth almost killing yourself, the toddler you're driving with, or the parents in the other car that you will eventually hit? If you prioritize a minute victory over a stranger in another car above your own safety and the safety of those you love, then you're fucked. Straight up. Get help. You need it.