Driving in the City

I am a conservative driver. Neil Stephenson wrote in Reamde Canadians dirty little secret is we drive like maniacs. I think he was basing this observation of Montrealers. Most Canadians drive safely and sanely. Torontonians are aggressive. More aggressive than I am. I like letting people into my lane when they find themselves stuck behind a parked delivery truck, taxi, or road construction. It makes me feel good. I like the little "thank you" waves I get through the back window.

When I lived outside the city I had to enter a completely different state of mind to drive in one. Normally, it was my responsibility not to hit anyone else. Inside the city it was their responsibility to get out of my way. Now I've lived here a while and have settled into a calmer routine. Today I got a call from the receptionist of a specialist I had been referred to by my regular doctor. Those of you who have recently tried to connect with a family physician in Toronto know how hard it is to find one - it took me almost two years. So the appointment with the specialist was scheduled for five months from now (and I was lucky to get that). But someone cancelled an appointment on short notice so the specialist could see me if I could get across town in half an hour. And by across town I mean north of the 401 and about ten blocks west.

I Googled the route and saw it took 32 minutes normally, 41 in current traffic. Google uses a formula that is usually pretty accurate but it's based on some approximation of the speed limit and in Toronto you can rarely get moving that fast. I once made an hour long trip (from Bloor and Yonge to Liberty Village) without getting out of second gear. In an aside, I laugh a people I see driving Ferraris and Lambos around town at rush hour. If my Ford Focus can't get out of second, what good is your million dollar hyper-car? I also find it hilarious that the Ferrari dealership is right next to Yorkville (a posh shopping area that used to be the centre of Toronto's counter-culture). So many people test driving a new 458 or 599 (cars designed to break 340 kph) can't reach speeds of 5 kph. I once raced a Gallardo through Yorkville - him driving a 500+ horsepower supercar, me walking - and it was no contest, I kicked his ass. Back to the story...

I decided to adopt the "get out of my way" mentality and get there in time for the appointment. I topped 70 kph on Yonge (not bad for early morning) and weaved back and forth between lanes in a way I never do. I changed lanes by sticking the front end of my car in any space it would fit - forcing other drivers to let me in. Then I cut some guy off and it was a little too close. It wasn't close to an accident, no one was in any danger. But I probably scared the guy, certainly pissed him off. So when we stopped at the next light beside each other I rolled down my window to apologize and he gave me the finger and yelled, "Go fuck yourself, you fucking c---s---er!" I retracted my apology but, judged in a non-biased way, he won that little verbal sparring match.

People get weird behind the wheel and "road rage" isn't much more than a name. It isn't a proper description and no where close to an explanation. I accidentally cut a guy off in traffic once (an honest mistake, this was me driving at my conservative, friendly best) and he stopped his car in the middle of the road, leapt out and started walking towards my car like he was going to drag me out of it and beat me to death. Fortunately, at the time I was working construction so I rolled down the window, said "I'm really sorry. I didn't see you." Then grabbed my 22 oz framing hammer and put it on the dashboard where he could see it. That resolved the situation.

If we hadn't been driving, if we had been riding bikes say (something I don't generally approve of), the situation would never have played out that way. It would have been a typically Canadian scene of apologies and expressions of dismay over personal culpability. But since we were driving cars he felt the urge (and somehow the right) to challenge me to a fight and I felt the appropriate response included an implicit threat with a hammer.

Many, if not most, Torontonians who drive despise taxi drivers. Most cyclists hate and fear them. They drive in a way that cannot even be characterized as aggressive. They drive like no one else is on the road. When I moved here I hated them. Now I kind of like them. They are the reductio ad absurdum of city driving. I think driving around a congested city would be both safer and more enjoyable if there were certain cars that didn't have to obey any traffic laws. I imagine a system where every car is painted with a special polymer that responds to electrical signals and each day there is a lottery for drivers. On the, extremely rare, days you win the lottery your car changes to a distinctive colour (one which all other cars a prohibited from using) and you can ignore every traffic law. You become like a cow on the streets of Delhi, free to wander at will. Wrong way down a one way street at 3 kph? Sure. Park by leaving your car in the middle of the outside lane while you eat lunch? Sure. 120 kph around and around a traffic circle? Why not? Whatever you want. And anyone hits you - that's their problem and their expense. Everyone would constantly be watching for the special cars breaking the rules. Everyone would have to constantly be prepared to get out of the way, to make way for others, to clear a path - something Toronto drivers won't even do for emergency vehicles. I've seen fire engines stuck in traffic more times than I can count. Torontonians seem to think ambulances have right of way but cop cars and fire trucks don't.

People drive like assholes because they feel what they are doing, where they are going, is more important that what other people are doing or where they are going. They also know they don't really have much to fear. I haven't seen anyone get stopped by the cops for a traffic violation since I moved here - parking tickets yes, moving violations, no. So maybe you get yelled at. Who cares? You yell back and try to go even faster. Adding an element of chaos would force people to care. Systems of rules are interesting things - traffic rules in particular. They are consensus agreements that allow tremendously complex systems to function. Think about how few rules there are involved in keeping traffic flowing. Literally thousands of vehicles make millions of journeys everyday in this city and there are very few accidents and even fewer injuries. And what makes the system work? Some lights, some signs, and some paint on the road. What makes the system even more interesting is almost no one actually obeys the rules. No one drives the speed limit on the highway. Here the limit on major highways in 100 kph but if you go less than 120 kph in the fast lane, you are going to seriously piss people off. 100 is for the inside lane, 120 the middle, and 120-140 the outside lane. In the city, people ignore certain signs (and I don't mean some people some times, I mean everybody all the time). The lines in the road are more like suggestions than actual separations (and how are they supposed to separate anything? It's just paint). The system only gets dangerous when not everyone is using the same set of rules, doesn't matter if it's the official set or some other one. Adding a chaotic element would make everyone constantly aware of that the system runs only by consensus, not by right and not by design. It works because we agree it works in a specific way. The increased variability in the system would force everyone else to be more aware of the fact of the system.