Friday, April 23, 2004
Who Gets to Drive?
I dream of the day when American cities have extensive subway systems and our towns are connected by highspeed rail lines—not primarily because I’m concerned about pollution and public safety, but because such a system would help my marriage. Cars are the bane of marriages. I’ve never met a couple who were compatible in the car. When two people are in a car together, only one can drive, and he or she just won’t drive the way you’d like. On a train you can converse with your spouse or read a book or share a lunch. Or sleep. When I’m a passenger in our car, I’m too busy clutching the handle on the door and pumping my right foot where the brake should be. I couldn’t possibly eat or sleep.
It’s all about instincts. My wife lacks good instincts as a driver. She slows down when I would speed up, brakes long before I would, and too often chooses the wrong lane and gets stuck behind stalled traffic. Every moment trapped in the passenger seat cuts a day from my natural life span.
My wife and I also have different maps in our heads. Given a choice, my wife will always go the back road or indirect way to our destination. On the northeast side of town, she loves the east-west combination of Rockne and Catalpa, a leafy route interrupted by so many stop signs and slow traffic lights that I can’t count them all. At every stop sign she comes to a complete stop. Bad instincts. She doesn’t understand that other drivers, naturally assuming that she’ll roll through, may be unable to brake in time. I brace myself in expectation of the collision that will put us both in traction. Good driving means behaving in a predictable manner. Rolling through a stop sign not only avoids the rear-end collision, it also gets you where you’re going faster. Sometimes if you’re clever you can cut off the cars on either side and avoid having to wait for them to pass through the intersection first, which can take forever.
It won’t surprise you to hear that I can’t always restrain myself from complaining about her driving, but it may shock you to hear that she also complains about mine—and, frankly, I do everything right. Like everyone else, I understand that a speed limit of 30 miles an hour means you should go at least 50. I don’t mean on small residential streets, but on Grape Road, Main Street, Miami Street, or Jefferson Boulevard. On any highway, as a general rule, you double the number on the sign and subtract ten. I’m skilled at whipping around slow vehicles and squeezing through tight spaces quickly. I always pay attention to the flow of traffic, staying in the flow, feeling it. It’s instinct. You just know the right speed. I can do this easily and still keep one hand free to gesticulate when necessary. That’s what they call defensive driving, which my wife refuses to practice. When she drives, I don’t like having to yell and gesture at people from the passenger seat, but my wife won’t do it, even though it’s the driver’s job, not the passenger’s.
My wife is overly concerned with safety, to the point that she actually risks causing serious accidents. For instance, if I’m driving and she notices that I haven’t fastened my seatbelt, she insists that I do so right away. I don’t know how many times I’ve almost run off the road into a tree or building while struggling to secure my seatbelt. Several times this difficult maneuver has kept me from passing a slow driver or getting through a yellow light.
When my wife and I are out together, I can’t always be the one who drives. That wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t be a modern marriage. But neither of us is happy in the passenger’s seat. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that we’re putting our lives in one another’s hands. That’s too much pressure to put on a marriage. One minor error of judgment and it could be all over. I’m not surprised to see so many big cars, vans, and SUV’s without passengers. I see how terribly you people drive. Who would want to be a passenger?
Things might have turned out differently for me and my wife. I had my chance. We wrote our wedding vows together except for a few lines, so I had an opportunity. I could kick myself now for having lacked the foresight to insist on one privilege for myself. Forget all that stuff about being honored and obeyed. I just want the part that says that whenever we go out together, I get to drive the car.