Cocks in cars

via flickr.com

This blog post is what I would like to say to the man in the car who my daughter and I encountered this morning on our bike ride to her school. She's only nine years old. She likes to ride her bike to school because she enjoys riding and because she knows that it's better for the environment than getting in a car. And it's quicker than walking. Her father and I have spent a lot of time teaching her how to be a considerate and careful user of the road. We only cycle on the quiet side streets between our house and her school - most of them have speed bumps on. I had assumed this was a safe enough environment for her to get her cycling confidence up on.

This morning we had just set off from our house, turning right on to our road, no cars in sight, when I heard a car accelerating at great speed up behind us from the bottom of our road. He came right up behind me and my daughter and then began beeping his horn loudly. I looked back towards him to check what the problem was, and he began gesturing violently that we should "get out of the way". Because there were cars parked on both sides of the narrow road this was an impossible request to fulfil anyway. But given that we had been ahead of him in the road, I didn't feel like he had any right to demand this of us. After driving right on our back wheels for another 10 seconds or so, beeping his horn continually, there was a small gap in the parked cars, which he used to drive past us at great speed, driving within a foot or so of me. He sped up and drove perhaps another 150 yards or so up the road. At which point he stopped, pulled in to a parking space and parked his car and went into his house without giving us a second glance.

We got a few feet further up the road and my daughter got off her bike and started to get upset. She told me that she didn't want to ride her bike any more and just wanted us to walk.

So here's what I'd like to say to that man in that car:

Your car isn't a dream machine. It isn't a beautiful, streamlined, hand-crafted work of art like a classic Porsche. It's a rusty, bland, light green, small Vauxhall Corsa. It's old. It looks ugly. And yet despite its mediocrity of design, this box of metal and plastic pumps out fumes which poison us all when we breathe them in, and poison the planet's atmosphere. Every time you get in it, you pump them out. And every time you get in it, it costs you money. You are actually putting your hand in your pocket for the privelege of pumping out noxious fumes for the rest of us to breathe. How "liberating".

It gets worse though, because as well as poisoning us, your "symbol of personal freedom" has the power to kill and maim. When driven at 40 mph, anyone you hit with your car will almost certainly be killed (90% of people hit by a car at that speed die). Even at 30 mph they only have a 50/50 chance of survival. I wonder how fast you were going as you drove up behind my daughter and I this morning?

Here's the thing - you may drive around residential, speed-bumped streets in your crappy car getting angry at the people who are getting in your way, knowing that where you need to be and what you need to do is so much more important than the things that the rest of us are trying to get done. You may, in your head, be a glamorous driving hero. James Hunt winning the F1 championship in 1976, perhaps? Or Malcolm Campbell in his Bluebird chasing world record glory. But I'm here to tell you that you're not a hero. You are a cock in a crap car.

And today you made a nine year old child cry. But at least you didn't kill anyone. Well done you.

Have a nice day.

Posted via email from tamsinbishton's posterous