this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2024
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In all seriousness, what the hell is up with the psychology of drivers? So much road rage, nastiness, and utter contempt for everything around their metal box of death on wheels.
In the US at least, Trump has validated half the country to express naked contempt for anyone they deem "other." This includes: any person of color, any woman, anyone younger than them, anyone that "looks" educated, anyone walking, anyone on a bicycle, and anyone in an electric car, among others.
I love that you worked a Trump reference into this but I’ve seen this sort of terrible behaviour from drivers since I was a kid (I’m 40). It’s also not unique to North America, nor even the West (seen the same thing in China).
No, it’s something about cars that creates a disconnect between us and other people. It’s like people outside the car’s windows are TV characters, not real people.
It's been an issue for a long time, but Trump, as well as COVID, severely exacerbated the issue
Its a mech suit that the more you consider it a freeing source of maneuvering the world the more attached to it you become and safer you feel from the rest of the world. No matter it makes people have all kinds of emotional responses that are unpleasant for the rest of us.
Sorry for triggering you, bro. But the cartoonist is trans, lives in New York, the comics where she is depicted are regularly set in NYC, the comic specifically references "in the last two years," she regularly makes comics about Trump, I specified in the United States, bicycle deaths from cars rapidly increased in the US starting in 2016 and reached their highest ever in 2022 (the last year with comprehensive data), and pedestrian deaths from cars increased 83% since 2009 with a larger increase occurring in the second half in the 2010s.
The comic isn't directly about the fact that people in cars behave poorly around bikes and pedestrians in the last four decades. It clearly addresses the recent spike in aggressive behavior from motorists, especially towards pedestrians and, by extension, cyclists.
Do you have some statistics to back up that claim? Wikipedia shows much higher cyclist fatalities per 100k population in the 1990s and prior decades. The only recent trend I can see there is an abnormally low fatality rate in 2010 followed by a return to 2000 levels.
Anyway, the point of my inquiry is to try to make sense of car drivers. This is a community about the impacts of cars on society, not the other way around.
Wrong data. Look up cyclist fatalities by automobile. You looked up the total.
I’ve only been able to find absolute numbers for those. I can’t find statistics based on number of bicycle trips, miles travelled, or per capita.
Feel free to refute this but how's this:
https://data.bikeleague.org/data/national-bicyclist-pedestrian-road-safety/
K
Not excusing the behaviour but I'd bet it's the amount of traffic people often sit through everyday along with the overall pace of life feeling faster.
I'm lucky to work weird hours where traffic is almost zero, but personally, sitting in hours of traffic everyday to and from work would make me want to pull my hair out.
Just one more lane bro it'll fix traffic
You're not stuck in traffic... You are the traffic
I agree with the "cars are not stuck in traffic, they are the traffic" thing, but I think it can be unfair when you make the subject people.
I am currently lucky enough that I can take the train to and from work. Never have to get on the asphalt on my commute except to cross the street twice. It's great. I sit down and it goes. Lovely stuff. This hasn't always been the case, though. My car was my one and only option at my previous workplace. Way too far to bike, no public transport, so I was forced to drive there. I hated every minute of being one of the many single-occupant cars on the road. I'd very much have liked to not be sitting in front of a steering wheel believe you me, but the city simply did not provide any better alternatives. I argue that I was stuck in traffic because I didn't choose to be there in a car to begin with. And that most definitely did get on my nerves quite often, and it did make me more irritable.
Yeah yeah people could and should vote for politicians who'll build that infrastructure, but until those are elected and that infrastructure has been built, there are plenty of people who are stuck in traffic.
Either they're forced or they believe they're forced to drive cars. I'd become insane too.
I’m sure that’s part of it but it can’t be the whole story. Some of the worst asshole drivers I’ve seen were driving not what I’d call “A-B cars.”
What's wrong with drivers? Frustrated mammal instincts while physical venting is impossible.
The feeling of wearing big heavy armour (the car) and being separated from others not perceived quite as human in their armour intuitively calls for extreme force in all interactions, but the instinct is frustrated by knowing any collision is expensive and must be avoided, the opposite of folkrace. (Imagine the stress and frustration if rugby armour was expensive and easily dinged and scratched, so the players would have to avoid getting rough, and if someone hit your expensive armour, it would suddenly become your job to extract insurance info or money from them while the game went on.)
Being agitated by imperfect humans in traffic while not being able to vent the anger out through muscle action is frustrating - you have to sit stiff in place and keep the controls steady. On a bike you can direct the anger to your muscles and get rid of it. A stimulant crash (often anger) while driving in heavy traffic is extra bad and common after a day of stimulants at work. (When the power steering belt broke on a Volvo V70 I was driving as a taxi, it was nice, healthier and more fun to use force to make the car turn. Why don't car makers allow me to adjust the powering ratio when it's all programmable now? Why are cars and computers designed to deprive the driver and user of all exercise?)
I worked in a university traffic research unit (psychology and cognitive science angle) after being a taxi driver.
(This text editor is shitty and frustrating, and my Lemmy feed is poison, but luckily I can fidget and pace a bit here by the computer.)