On Motoring and Walking

The number of fatal road accidents is so high in these days as to have called forth comparisons with the casualties of the War. The comparison between war and dangerous driving is an apt one; in both cases the main factors are sadism, masochism and fear. We may correct a statement made by The Times that safe driving is largely a moral question by saying that it is in fact a psychological question. What analyst does not know of patients who drive immersed in their daydreams and wake up only when confronted with an emergency, or of the inhibited persons whose only outlet for aggression is in driving? However useful this outlet may be for the mental balance of the individual, it cannot be said to make for safety on the road.

I need not describe in detail the ways in which Oedipus impulses find expression in driving; in the urge to overtake and resentment at being overtaken, in the wish to keep the road to oneself, in defying the police and exceeding speed limits. Some drivers concentrate their hostility (or fear) on more powerful rivals, on better and faster cars than their own, on lorries, or buses; others on younger brothers, smaller cars, cyclists or pedestrians. Positive feelings find expression in helping and rescuing others, in willingness to follow the lead of another car, in conspiring with other drivers against the police, and so on. The cyclist's resentment against motorists is due to similar unconscious motives. A boy reports that he was afraid of being run over when cycling by a small grey car; he associates the colour of the car to the shade of his father's suit. When cyclists held protest meetings against cyclist paths they must have felt like children excluded from the company of adults and restricted to the nursery; and the Government's argument that the measure was only intended for their own good carried little conviction because it reminded them of childhood when bitter medicine and all other unpleasant things were recommended in just this wa