Driving. (A companion piece to a post from last September).

I recently spent a few weeks overseas, some of the time in a couple cities comparable in size to Toronto. Sydney, Australia and Singapore.

In neither place did I ever sit behind the wheel of a car, doing the actual driving. Mostly because the wheel was on the wrong side of the vehicle, and I may just be getting too old to handle that kind of cognitive dissonance. Motoring habits and clutch-pedal foot rusted into place.

Still,

I outed in automobiles on occasion while away. I operated in traffic. And I can tell you that both cities, in no way, could be considered car-unfriendly. The label ‘Paris (or Amsterdam) of the Pacific’ is not a designation likely attached to their reputation.

That said,

I found myself driving a few days after my return home to Toronto, running an unexpected errand to a part of town I do not usually travel to, an hour or so trip, both ways. Almost immediately I was reminded that our city is so car friendly, so car oriented, so utterly car dependent, that we’ve come full circle to exist in a bubble of automobile nasty. An absolute drag and onerous task to drive here, in the city, around the city, out of the city, into the city. Vehicularly, we operate in a toxic, hostile environment, merely trying to get from point A to point B an exercise in beefing and contention.

Alleged low-key, polite and innocuous Canadians turned into abrasive, antagonistic road warriors in the driver’s seat. Compromise, Our Strength? Take no prisoners, more like. No quarter. Not in my lane, pallie. Fender-to-fender combat.

There are lots of reasons given for our current state of automotive unpleasantness. The fifth season of the year, construction. A lack of legitimate transportation alternatives available to many regional residents. Everybody feels they have to drive, pointing to their Google maps as proof. Convenience. Even when it’s a hassle and headache navigating around in your car, it’s still door-to-door service, regardless of how many hours it takes. The very fact that the post-war city (especially the sub and exurbs) were designed first and foremost for private vehicular travel.

Relentless car company advertising promising us the pure and beautiful freedom of movement.

We were guaranteed a golden ride, goddammit! So what’s with all the fucking traffic?!?!

It certainly doesn’t help matters to have a provincial government that governs as if its supporters are drivers first, drivers second, and drivers only. There is no amount of congestion that cannot be fixed by proposing to build new traffic lanes, widening highways, burying highways under existing highways, freeing existing road space from the perfidious tyranny of bike lanes, bus lanes, ‘fancy streetcar’ lanes. The only good public transit is underground public transit or, in a pinch, elevated, so as not to interfere with the natural flow of automobile traffic.

All feeding into an overweening sense of driver entitlement that inevitably leads to a distempered disappointment when traffic snarls and your destination just seems to be getting further and further away the more you drive toward it.

Combine this resentment with the fact that there seems to be next to no actual enforcement on our roads. Red lights run as a matter of course. Texting while driving like it isn’t illegal. Speed zone? Surely you mean speeding zones, amirite. There exist few disincentives to high risk, aggressive, fury-fueled driving in this town.

Don’t like my driving? Call 1-800-EAT-SHIT.

Never mind that vehicle size has grown menacingly large, military grade status de rigueur in too many family driveways, and what we’ve concocted is antisocial behaviour fanned and festering during every daily commute. Every Saturday errand run. Every attempted escape from the city on every long weekend.

And it isn’t an antisociality that suddenly evaporates as soon as you throw your Armada Nismo into park an hour after you left the office, hop down out of the cab and make your way into the house for your first post-work cocktail. Hi, honey! I’m home! Road rage kept bottled up in your oversized cup holder, stewing and brewing in preparation for the morning commute.

Now,

I do not know the state of local politics in Sydney, Australia or Singapore. So I can’t make an honest, educated correlated link between a calmer drive time and more civil civic discourse. But I can attest to the fact that politics here in Toronto has grown more brittle, more combative, more bad-mannered and petty as driving conditions have deteriorated. Aggrieved and put-out drivers, their anger and resentment spilling over to make every commuter’s trip, on a bus, bike or on foot, a misery and hassle, brimming with reactionary, put-upon victimhood.

Sound familiar?

If chunks of your day are spent looking out through the front windshield of a car, life takes on the hue of everybody for themselves, cooperation and give-and-take are for suckers, rules are for other people. As a matter of fact I do own the road.

And that’s pretty much doctrinaire modern conservatism in a nutshell.