Who’s Gonne Drive you Home ? Not Me!

I don’t like driving, never did, and I actually don’t understand why people enjoy it. What is the great fun of sitting in a machine that could kill someone. Why is it freedom to sit confound in a tiny space where you can barely move? to me freedom is walking.

Why is that enjoyable to drive in a narrow road behind a cyclist that you cannot overtake because you might kill him? The funny thing is that I feel safer as a pedestrian, crossing roads with limited visibility running in between cars on a dual carriage way with no zebra crossing, but when I am sitting behind the wheel of a metal monster then I am scared – why is that?.

Driving brings responsibility: you need to make sure you don’t kill anyone and no one is killing you. You need to check front and back and side mirrors that nobody is overtaking you or just trying to commit suicide – and when you drive you notice that there are a lot of suicidal people who just stroll or cycle underneath your wheels…

The real freedom is using public transportation: no responsibility at all, you just hop on and off in what stop you like, if the train or the bus breaks down you do not need to call AA and wait in the middle of the road to be rescued, you just get off the train and go to another train, cursing at transport for London that they are useless, but basically you have a little bit more time to read that magazine or finish that book, or prepare for your meeting, nothing is required of you –

now that my friends is what I call freedom.

But here is the strange thing that actually made me write this post: like most of you I got my driving licence at the age of 17, as soon as it was legally allowed, and have been driving many years, not with joy or fun but just as a necessity to get me from A to B. Then I moved to London where I completely relied on public transportation and I was free to go from bus to train whenever I felt like it. But after many years of relying on public transportation I had to drive again,

well it is just like riding a bike I thought – NOT.

It’s as if that part of my brain was surgically removed. As if I had never set foot in a driver’s seat, it could be a plane’s cockpit for all I care, completely new to me, I could not even shift the gears!!!!

What happened? isn’t my brain suppose to dig from the back drawers of my memory the driving manual? to dust it a little bit and then Ta Da!! to drive away? sadly not.

I am sitting behind the wheel, affirming every chauvinistic stereotype in the book, baffled trying to remember which gear does what and which button is the hand brake (oh wow there are automatic hand brakes now…)

So if you are stuck behind somebody who is driving at a constant 20 mph  , it is probably me, so relax, take your time, say hello, I will not drive any faster anytime soon!