I
don’t know who it was who came up with the idea of ‘aggressive
styling’ for motor cars, but whoever it was, I can only assume that
they had very small private parts.
Slanted
ever-blazing headlamps made to look like angry ‘eyes’, and
vicious ‘bared teeth’ grilles may now be seen in rear-view
mirrors roaring up back-bumpers world-wide, and frankly, these
vehicles make me want to put on my hazards, stop my car, get out, and
punch them right in their grim grilles with a brick. ‘Aggressive
styling’ certainly produces aggression in me.
Has
anyone in the motor industry, and indeed, in Parliament, stopped to
think how much unnecessary stress these modern cars produce in other
drivers when they’re being tail-gated by one? How these cars seem
to produce in their drivers a sense of righteous invincibility that
may, quite possibly, make a significant contribution to the
exponential rise of road-rage and frankly atrocious modern driving? I
know I feel a mounting sense of danger, panic, and fear when I am
observing the speed limit and one of these things roars up behind to
‘challenge’ me. It angers me because under unnecessary stress,
people can make mistakes, and I don’t want to be pushed into errors
in my driving because someone with poor taste and money to burn has
bought a death machine with which to intimidate anyone who crosses
their path.
 |
| Beastly. The Lexus LC 500 |
With
their headlamps blazing up your bum, you can’t see the human behind
the wheel; just this angry monster trying to push you off the road.
That’s the kind of stress nobody needs, and certainly not when
they’re operating dangerous machinery.
These
cars seem to tell their owners “you don’t need to observe the
speed limit – that’s for pussies like the woman in front”. I
live in the English countryside. The countryside is different. There
are different factors involved than those seen in car adverts with
their long, straight, empty roads. Here, you get tractors with heavy
muck loads bumbling and swaying along at 35mph on 60mph roads. It’s
not up for debate. You pass when it’s safe to do so, or if they
obligingly pull over for you. End of. Driving your vicious-looking
car up my arse isn’t going to make the vehicle in front of me go
any faster.
On
the industrial estate where I work there are high, unavoidable speed
humps in the road. Due to financial constraints, I have an older car,
so I go very slowly over them. I am not going to destroy my
suspension just because someone in some indestructible tank less than
2 years old wants to steeplechase over them. Only last week, I was
negotiating one of these when I realised that the boy in the car
behind me was literally an inch from my bumper and not even looking
ahead as he very nearly rammed right into me. He was gazing out of
his side window, bored, impatient. When he finally looked around, I
had to mouth “BACK. OFF” in my rear-view mirror at him. He gave
me the finger. Well, he could. He was in a shiny big new car. As far
as he was concerned, I had no right to be on the road in a ten year
old Ford.
New car discrimination against older car is a thing. Older car driven by middle-aged woman and the needle is in the red.
And
yet, there I was only the other day, gently and steadily steering my
old girl through a raging flooded forest ford, only to meet a man in
a 4x4 the other side, chewing his fingernails, and nervously trying
to judge the situation to see if he could do the same. As I drew up
level with him, I rolled down my window and smiled: “Slow and
steady. You’ll be fine.” He seemed grateful, if a tad chagrined
to be guided by a small woman in a granny wagon. Presumably, his
shiny, angry car’s computer wasn’t offering any solutions as to
how he could negotiate this one.
I
recently heard that headlamps are about to come under government
scrutiny. Something to do with the trend for unregulated
over-brightness in headlamps. I do hope so. For some time now, car
manufacturers seem to have been pushing the ‘necessity’ to be
able to see 2 miles down the road ahead of you, and blind oncoming
traffic into the ditch.
I
hope MPs will also debate ‘aggressive styling’, and its
psychological effects, but I suspect that would fall under ‘freedom
of choice’. Not just for the consumer, but for motor trade gamer
generation designers addicted to anime war comics.
Motoring
should be about getting from point A to point B as safely,
comfortably, and calmly as possible. For all their labour-saving
features, gadgetry, aggressive styling and marketing, modern cars do
not promote safety. Quite the opposite, in fact. Steadily rising RTA
figures would certainly seem to bear this out.
Slow
down, and get a grip. Unless you’re driving an ambulance, no
journey is worth anyone’s life.
©
Emmeline Wyndham - 2018
