Crosstown Traffic

"The more you drive, the less intelligent you are." At least that's what Miller would tell us in Alex Cox's "Repo Man." It may be that these words seeped into my cerebral cortex way back when I worked at a video store and watched that film, mostly in bits and pieces, dozens of times. It could also be that regular exposure to my younger brother, who has seen it front to back more times than he can count, has something to do with it. Ironic on that note because he now makes his living as a driver.
I don't. I ride my bike to and from work. I tend to defer to others when it comes time to get behind the wheel. Not because I lack the capacity to drive, but because I find it boring. My son is on the cusp of his sixteenth birthday, and he is all about the incipient freedom of the open road. I remember that youthful idealism. That was before I learned about traffic. Sitting in traffic. Dealing with traffic. Crosstown traffic. Traffic jams. Driving isn't about getting from place to place. It's about getting from place to place while avoiding all those other folks who are trying to get from place to place without collision.
This world view may be why I wasn't particularly shocked by a pair of recent news stories. The first concerned a one hundred year old man who drove onto a sidewalk near a Los Angeles school and hit eleven children. It could be that after a certain age, we should think twice about letting our older citizens get behind the wheel. Or address the Republican National Convention. The other story comes from Bangkok. The heir to the Red Bull fortune struck and killed a policeman with his Ferrari, dragging him for several blocks. Let's hope that besides giving one wings, that Red Bull will also give one a good lawyer.
Me? I'll stick to two wheels, and my head on a swivel.