America’s deep love affair with cars has homicidal undercurrents.
Americans are, in general, a friendly and courteous people. They smile at strangers, say please and thank you, and put up with the extortion racket run by the girl-scout cookie mafia in fair good humour. All this changes, though, every time they collectively climb behind the wheel of an automobile.
Of all nations, America has had the longest and most enduring romance of all with the automobile. Americans spend more time in cars than any other people in the world. They are conceived in cars, eat in cars, sleep in cars, lose their virginity in cars, watch movies about cars while sitting in cars, and in increasing numbers, die in cars. This is a love affair that is deep and enduring, and as with many such affairs, it has deep homicidal undercurrents.
Take any garden-variety middle class bloke. He could be an accountant or a stockbroker, or perhaps a middle manager. He could be having trouble managing his middle, but put him behind the wheel of an automobile, and he instantly becomes Rambo, Dirty Harry, and the Terminator, all rolled into one. He will brook no challenge, and will guard his stretch of tarmac with every ounce of horsepower at his disposal. After all, this is what his car is designed to do. The average American sports utility vehicle has enough power to light up a small city, it can seat an entire family of sixteen, and is equipped with four cup-holders per person so that said family can consume a variety of different beverages while luxuriating in its plush surroundings.
The very embodiment of the car on steroids is the Hummer. Built for the military, it now ferries soccer Moms across the country to their school games in fortified comfort. It’s designed to keep going even if hit by gunfire multiple times, which obviously makes it a popular choice of transport in downtown Los Angeles. It is also fully amphibious in case you ever feel like driving to Australia to pick up groceries.
It does not help that these cars have such adrenaline pumping, testosterone boosting names like Renegade, Outlander, Commander, and Wrangler. With all this power at his disposal, and no way to exercise it, what’s a man to do? He’s practically forced to flip the bird at fellow motorists, cut off lesser cars, and run over the odd suicidal pedestrian. As for bicyclists, two words suffice to describe their place in the hierarchy on an American city street — cannon fodder. They call it road rage, but those bland words hardly do justice to such an elemental passion. Besides, what has the road got to do with it? I would call it “vehicular bloodlust” because that’s really what it is. Rome had its coliseum and its gladiators; suburban America has its six-lane freeways and its outsized cars.
I drive a small car myself, but whenever I’m muscled off the road by one of these juggernauts,
I dream of the car that will fulfil all my automotive fantasies. It has not been invented yet, but it will soon be, and it will singlehandedly rescue the American auto industry from its doldrums. It will be an SAV — a sport annihilation vehicle. When I slide behind the wheel of that bad boy, the rest of you had better watch out.