Cynicism for Fun, Health, and Profit, part three. More Cynicism for Drivers

In 2016, 27,461 Americans died in traffic fatalities, which is about 11.6 per 100,000 population. This number is actually lower than in most previous years, going all the way back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Many of these deaths were caused by other drivers. The world average is 17.4 fatalities per 100,000 people. The American traffic fatality rate is almost exactly double that of France (5.1 fatalities per 100,000). In both America and France, traffic fatalities would be vastly reduced if cautious people were cynics. Wait four seconds, not just two. That’s all it takes. I was always a little annoyed at Tulsa drivers, who would not move for four seconds when the light turned green. After my experience, I have become one of them.

I share now some further thoughts about cynicism and driving. This is important, since so many of us spend so much time doing it.

Guys who drive big trucks are more likely to demolish small cars, and their drivers, than are other motorists. There are several reasons for this.

• First, I refer primarily to guys in big trucks. Gals are a little more cautious, and a little more thoughtful about other people. This is because, in general, women are more empathetic than men. This is not a fundamental difference, but a difference of degree.
• Second, the driver of a big pickup truck has a sense of invulnerability. Many big pickup trucks have lots of defensive armor, such as deer-catchers on the front, and the cabin of the truck is much further above ground level than that of the typical automobile. A big pickup truck really can run into and over almost any other vehicle with little risk of harm to the truck or driver. My previous car was demolished by a pickup backing up at full speed into the road. The damage resulted entirely from the hitch at the back of the pickup, which was not even scratched. This sense of invulnerability is part of the psychology of most guys in pickups. I notice that, where I live, many houses have lots of unrelated people living together, since they cannot afford to each live in their own place. This is because they are poor. But why are they poor? Outside of many of these houses—I can think of three such houses in the half mile near where I work—several pickup trucks are parked. I have checked the prices of pickup trucks, and each of these trucks costs about as much as my house and property are worth, here in rural Oklahoma. They cannot afford a good place to live because they spend their money on a truck instead. It seems to me that, here in rural Oklahoma, there are many shacks that could easily blow away in a wind storm; the residents could tie their shack down to their pickup truck to save it.
• Third, by looking down on us, they often feel superior. They feel that this gives them the freedom to proclaim their superiority. Where I live, it is not uncommon to see Confederate insignia on trucks. For a while, when we had a black president, several trucks displayed full-sized Confederate flags from struts that took up the entire truck bed.
• Fourth, by driving a big truck, these drivers feel that they really own the road. The rest of us have to move to the side for them, whether they are in our lane or in the oncoming lane. This would simply not happen in, for example, France, where the roads are too small. I saw two pickup trucks, both small, in France. One was broken down and used to store firewood. The other was very old. While French drivers are not noted for their courtesy, they at least have less dangerous weapons to use against other drivers. According to counts that I have kept (though the study is ongoing), patrolmen pull over cars disproportionately often in comparison with how common they are, compared to pickup trucks. In rural Oklahoma, about one-third of vehicles are big pickup trucks, but I have not yet seen one of them pulled over during my study period. They seem to own the road here in Oklahoma, with official approval.
• Finally, many drivers, especially those of pickups, assume that you have no momentum. They assume that you can stop for them in literally no time at all. Part of their feeling of invulnerability is to think themselves exempt from the laws of physics. “Stopping distance” is not just a good idea; it’s a law of nature. The cynic assumes that other drivers do not even know the simplest laws of physics.

None of these things needs to be a conscious decision on the part of the pickup driver. They do, however, make these assumptions, even without intending harm.

I have long made the assumption that drivers of commercial trucks are very cautious and are unlikely to do anything that might put other drivers at risk. This is because their trucks are well marked, and the company that sponsors the drivers (even if they are owner-operators) can get sued as a result of the truck drivers’ negligence. I still believe that this assumption is largely correct, although some people who know truck drivers tell me that my optimism is frequently unwarranted.

I also drive with my lights on (the driving lights, not full headlights) even in the day, in order to increase my chances of being seen. I also drive with my right hand ready to honk, and my left ready to flash my bright lights. While I have only had to use these tactics three times in the past year, it might have saved my life.

I also sometimes use my flashers. Usually, flashers indicate that the vehicle is going significantly under the speed limit. But where I live, almost everybody speeds. If I am driving merely at the speed limit, in dense traffic, I often use my flashers, since to the other drivers I represent a slow-moving hazard. I do this infrequently and only in dense, rapid traffic.

As a cynical driver, I find it nearly impossible, except on a lonely roadway with few other drivers, to relax and enjoy the drive. I have to be constantly alert, anticipating the possible recklessness of other drivers.

Cynicism for Fun, Health, and Profit, part two. Cynicism is not Paranoia

I waited for the light to change at an intersection in Tulsa. Dramatic music; you know what is going to happen next. When the green left-turn signal came on, I slowly proceeded into the intersection. Another car shot through the intersection against a red light and nearly collided with me. Had I not waited a couple of seconds before entering the intersection, I would not be writing this, unless possibly by using one of those Stephen-Hawking devices. Maybe I could have bought his, once he didn’t need it any more. I slammed on my brakes and avoided death. Had I simply followed the rules, I would be dead. I hesitated a couple of seconds, and am intact. Something similar happened scarcely over a year ago, when a big pickup truck backed up from a driveway at full speed and collided with my previous car, totaling it but leaving me uninjured. I was already being cautious before my most recent accident; but it was at that moment that I decided to become a cynic.

Cynicism is the expectation that bad things are going to happen to you. In the example above, a cautious person waits a couple of seconds before driving into an intersection; a cynic waits maybe four seconds before doing so. A cautious person looks at the other cars, as I did. All the other cars had stopped for the red light. The car that ran the light came from behind them at full speed and was invisible until the last moment. The cautious person dies; the cynic lives.

The cynic lives and is happy. This is because, if the event that the cynic feared occurs, he or she is ready to take evasive action. If the event does not occur, he or she can sigh in relief. Cynicism is the precautionary principle applied in a consistent and thoughtful way.

Paranoia, on the other hand, is a delusion. The paranoid person assumes everyone else, and all the forces of nature, are focusing malicious intent on them personally. There is no way that this could be true. There is no network of physical laws that could work this way.

In fact, it is also paranoia to think that the laws of nature conspire against anybody, not just you. “Don’t tempt fate” is a statement of paranoia, not cynicism.

Of course, evolution has instilled in our brains a mild paranoia. The shadows of leaves swaying in the wind, which you see from the corner of your eye, do not attract your conscious attention. But if one of the shadows moves a little differently from the others, it instantly grabs your attention. This attention occurs faster than conscious thought is possible and is accompanied by a brief rush of terror. A shadow that moves differently may be a predator ready to leap on you. Today, that predator is most likely to be another human being. This is an instinct that may have begun hundreds of millions of years ago when a clam shut its shell when a shadow, which may have been a predator detected by its simple eyes, passed overhead.

Cynicism, at the intense end of the scale, grades into paranoia. But unlike mid-range cynicism, paranoia makes you unhappy. The paranoid person assumes that the forces of man (less frequently, woman) and nature are a constant and focused threat, and happiness never follows when the anticipated evil does not occur. And the constant worry can make you sick. Worry actually depresses the immune system, leaving you vulnerable to infections that you might otherwise avoid. Moreover, it is very unlikely that the paranoid person avoids catastrophes any more often than does a healthy cynic.

Cynicism is not quite the same as pessimism. Pessimism is a lazy assumption that bad things will happen more than you expect that they will. We joke about it and call it Murphy’s Law. We also trivialize it by saying that a pessimist sees the glass as half empty, while the optimist sees it as being half full. The implication is that a glass, half of whose volume is filled, can be either half full or half empty, so you might as well say it is half full. But whether the glass is half full or half empty depends on what is happening. If the glass is getting fuller, then it is half full; if the fluid is being lost, the glass is half empty. In fact, a glass that is “almost empty” can be accurately described as “becoming full” in the first case. A cynic does not make lazy or trivial assumptions. The cynic wants to know more information. In the absence of such information, the cynic assumes the glass may be losing its contents, and it is time to make preparations for the time when it may be empty. Cynicism is an intelligent and thoughtful pessimism.

The half-full half-empty error applies to the world in general. The cynic anticipates that bad things are always ready to happen, for example while waiting at a stoplight. This does not mean that most drivers are evil or careless. It does not mean that half of them are. It does not even mean that very many of them are. The cynic recognizes, however, that even if only one in a hundred drivers is evil or careless, then you run the risk of a deadly collision once in every one hundred red lights. It does not take very many days to accumulate those one hundred intersections. The cynic does not assume most people, or even very many people, are bad, but just that the number is not zero.

Cynicism can lead to economic and legal policies that help to make us safer and happier. One example is no-fault insurance. This is the kind of insurance policy, on the government level, in which the insurance companies of both drivers pay equally for the resulting damage. It avoids the costs and delays of litigation. Of course, if significant injury is involved, the negligent (or evil) driver must be punished in some realistically-enforceable way. No-fault insurance assumes that there are a large number of negligent (or evil) drivers, and to litigate all of them would be impossible. My sense of justice flares up against this kind of policy. The driver who causes the accident should be penalized. I believe this very strongly. But no-fault insurance might be the only workable policy. Of course, insurance companies need to know which drivers repeatedly cause collisions so that they can charge higher rates or deny coverage. This, too, is a healthy cynical policy. Insurance companies know that, without charging higher rates for careless drivers, they will lose a lot of money.

Another example of cynicism at work is the development of driverless cars. The technology remains imperfect, and will always be so, but already it has a better safety record than that of human drivers. Its main advantage is to keep careless drivers from endangering other people and their property. But it also helps to protect responsible drivers who might make an unavoidable error, such as sneezing at the wrong time. A cynic assumes that everyone can make mistakes.

Cynicism, therefore, is not a personalized paranoia nor is it a lazy pessimism. It is a healthy anticipation of the countless evils that surround us.