Not quite a misanthropist

When Peter told a colleague of his, Vic, while they were standing beside the coffee machine at his place of work, that he was wondering how some people might behave in other social environments going by the way they drive on the road, Vic answered that he'd want to suggest introducing IQ tests for budding drivers on top of the regular driving test.

While he was saying this, he pointed a finger at his temple. This meant that Vic had seen his share while being out on the road. And example that he added immediately had obviously taken place just a few days earlier.

(Microsoft Media)

He said there was this little blue car, sporting a P-plate, with two people inside who seemed to be chatting and not paying attention. Their car was drifting ever so slightly across into the other lane until someone had to blow the horn and did.

This made the blue car drift back into its own lane, not too quickly, though, but steadily. The car that had hooted from then on remained at a safe distance, at least two car lengths away, in spite of the busy morning traffic when space is always at a premium.

A few moments later the drifting began again and Vic, being two or three car spaces behind the understandable hooter was beginning to ask himself, as he told Peter, whether the driver in that little blue car was sober at all, or well-rested in any way. Drifting on with the empty space behind it growing, the blue car then virtually floated into a turning lane leading up to a driveway into a shopping centre.

Vic said he hoped at that stage that the driver and his passenger were heading straight for a café and ordering a strong, a very strong coffee. And since Peter had mentioned the term "social environment", he had virtually added a statement to his piece of information that was almost political, but at least philosophical.

(Microsoft Media)

Yes, he added, to make this point clearer still, he really thinks about other people, too, out there on the road. Out there one is just as much a part of a social system as here in the office environment or anywhere else, for that matter, anywhere that one isn't alone. But some people in their cars seem to exist in a universe of their own, regardless of who else is there alongside them.

Peter was really getting worked up a bit by then. For him, driving on those major and minor roads was being a part of a system that was meant to work for everyone involved in it, so that as a result there weren't any, or at least not too many, problems getting in anyone's way because of the inconsiderate behaviour of a few.

But George, who had remained standing in the doorframe and listening, was wondering if Peter wasn't caught up too much in idealising things. Wasn't history full of examples - and police records, too, for that matter - with events pointing to the contrary?

And wasn't it, therefore, better or at least more useful or practical to be alert and prepared, and expect pretty much anything on the road? Did that mean silently accepting the things the way they were? And stop hoping for any kind of improvement? Was this already resignation, George was beginning to fear.

(Microsoft Media)

Yes, there certainly was a human potential, but, alas, George silently sighed to himself, this was the potential and unfortunately all too often just wishful thinking, though manifest here and there, more as an exception to the rule. In the end, though, he knew that Peter and Vic were right. Ever so many people's lack of respect and consideration for their fellow beings was a problem with no early end in sight. But if an IQ test would be the solution, George simply couldn't tell.