Driving Lessons?

My car is a mess. Given our unpredictable climate and my busy schedule, it badly needs tidied – it contains a range of objects such as sunglasses, coats, one or two abandoned extra layers and a broken umbrella, to say nothing of its usual cargo of gym kit, first aid kid, CDs and an emergency book in case there’s a long queue at the car wash. In a society where we spend so much time behind the wheel, are our cars a microcosm of who we are?

First there’s the choice of car. Are we the sporty convertible, the supermini, the family hatchback, the estate car, the rugged four-wheel drive with its elevated driving position, or that ubiquitous symbol of successful family life – the people-carrier? We are what we drive and how clean and tidy our cars are epitomises the level to which we retain control over our increasingly busy lives. We’re judged by the make of our car too. The prestige-make drivers - Mercedes, BMW, Jaguar, Lexus, Audi, Alfa Romeo – are clearly more important and successful than the rest of us. Vauxhall or Opel has the cachet of the exciting and eternally young; Peugeot and Citroen hold a frisson of French sophistication; Volkswagen embodies Teutonic efficiency so generously and, indeed, efficiently that it rubs off on its cousins, Seat and Skoda; while if you drive a sports model such as Porsche, Ferrari, Maserati or Aston Martin, you probably like your martini “shaken not stirred” and presumably hold a magnetic sway over the opposite sex. We accessorise with metallic paint, glass sunroof, alloy wheels… and even these things are an announcement of identity and preference. If the gold alloys and flared wheel-arch of the metallic blue Subaru Impreza are there, as the car’s name hints, to impress, then who drives the silver model with the cerise pink alloys? We signal our importance in a cryptic personalised plate, pointing out our initials, birthdays, or the love of our life. We become the celebrities of the traffic jam, where everybody knows our name…

Then there are the stickers. Increasingly, it seems to be necessary to announce to our fellow drivers the identity or social make-up of our passengers. It all began fairly innocuously with the “Baby on Board” sticker. This seemed to represent a tacit agreement to drive carefully behind a vehicle carrying a baby – no-one, after all, would want to see a helpless infant injured in an accident. But now the fashion has escalated. “Cheeky Monkey on Board”, “Princess on Board”, “Small Person on Board”, “Cool Dude on Board”, “Diva on Board” – will the list never end? A few days ago I saw a new one: “Expectant Mum on Board”. What’s next, I wondered. “Expectant Dad on Board – But He Doesn’t Know Yet”? “Road Hog on Board”? “Idiotic Boy Racer Who Shouldn’t Be Behind The Wheel on Board – Watch Out!”? And does it mean that those who don’t indicate their identity and their valid place in society deserve to be unceremoniously rammed off the road? Is the person with no Baby on Board fair game – socially unviable in any case, so no great loss? A well-known comedian tells the perhaps apocryphal story of a serious road traffic accident, at which the driver of a car with a Baby on Board sticker was taken to hospital unconscious, leaving the police searching the surrounding area frantically, in case the advertised infant had been thrown clear of the car. Should these stickers be like L-plates – should they be removed when the relevant passenger is not, in fact, on board, to avoid such agonised confusion?

And then there’s parking. More and more car parks seem to have pre-labelled spaces for the status announcing, sticker-bearing cars, in an elaborate social comedy of parking permits. Disabled parking I can understand, but it’s infuriating when those without blue badges use it, just because it’s not as far to walk to the shops. Parent and Child parking points a dismissive figure at the childless, and why is it not all right for parents to use it when travelling with teenagers, or for grown-up children with their non-disabled parents? What’s next in our car-parks? Special spaces for expectant mums? For people under or over a certain age, or height, or weight? Extra-large spaces for the owners of people-carriers or prestige brand cars, so that they can park diagonally without getting a ticket? Soon, I predict, there will be just one space, in the most distant corner of the car park, for the ordinary, unbadged, undefined driver to park in his anonymity of shame.

And then of course there are all the things we do behind the wheel. Driving is multi-tasking, but in our busy twenty-first century life it’s multi-tasking with attitude. I’ve seen make-up applied and stubble shaved in traffic jams. I’ve heard of people completing entire CD-based courses to learn a new language for the summer holidays on their daily commute, or listening to the complete works of Charles Dickens, thanks to the talking books which began life as a service for the blind, but continue now as a bedtime story for the busy. And don’t forget Bluetooth. I use this a lot myself, and am constantly concerned that my fellow motorists will think I’m some sort of lunatic, as I apparently talk to myself, frown, smile, laugh and occasionally gesticulate behind the wheel, as I make appointments or catch up, hands-free, with friends or family as I drive. I have similar worries when I hear something funny on the radio… when I’m driving to work in the morning, listening to Chris Evans on Radio 2, and end up seeing the oncoming traffic through a blur of laughter at one of his anecdotes, I wonder whether I’ll catch the eye of another amused motorist, listening to the same story in a bizarre sort of miles apart togetherness. The same thing can happen with music, when you suddenly notice the person at a standstill beside you in the traffic jam is singing along to the very same song you’re listening to on the radio.

Although our driving experience can unite us, it can also enrage and divide. The stress of our packed lives explodes into road rage – many will no doubt empathise with the occasions on which I’ve had irate fists waved at me for not pulling out fast enough to suit the car behind me at a junction or roundabout when pulling out that fast would be suicidal given the speed and volume of the oncoming traffic. Fists are waved, impolite gestures exchanged, unprintable descriptions of fellow-drivers enunciated extra clearly for the benefit of lip-reading. And yet sometimes these moments of stress and anger can degenerate unexpectedly into the sort of unintentional hilarity which can make your day. A friend told me recently of travelling home from Belfast after a shopping trip some years ago, and how, when overtaken unsafely by a small car containing four young women, her husband had waved his glasses at the driver in a frustrated gesture meaning “Are you blind?!” Later, when my friend and her husband overtook the car, the four young women waved items of underwear at them – whether these had been freshly removed or pulled from overnight bags remained unclear. After another five minutes, my friend’s husband decided to overtake the “Girl Racers” again – and was ready for them. Men’s underwear had been purchased during the shopping trip, and was duly waved at the other car, leaving the inhabitants of both cars catatonic with laughter and the road rage defused. This was bettered only by my own experience early one morning last week. Stuck at traffic lights on my way to work, I noticed a white van draw up beside me in the next lane. A half-glance revealed that the man in the passenger seat was holding a large white paper bag, which appeared to contain his breakfast. He smiled across the lane, reached into his paper bag and drew out a sausage, which he proceeded to wave at me. I drove on to work that morning with tears of laughter running down my face. I suppose I should have been outraged – sexual harassment by cooked breakfast could be a whole new crime – but somehow the sense of the ridiculous amid the morning rush brightened my day.

If we’re driving ourselves mad by rushing through a lifetime’s journey of multi-tasking busyness in our self-defining cars, then surely those moments of defused tension are the things that keep us sane. The carbon footprint of our travelling might be endangering the planet; all the rushing and deadlines and tension could just destroy us. Let’s try to keep our sense of humour as we drive.