Autos, Entitlement and "The Technology Monkey"

Image:  Coolcarshotgirls.com

I am a pedestrian, now retired, who has walked the last 14 years by choice from a Veterans Home to a volunteer job at the local Library. The journey is 3 miles one way. Some of my journey takes me through city traffic.

I have found myself sprawled across the hood of a car after the driver turned right without looking to a green light crosswalk while making a cell phone call. 

I have been cursed for being in the middle of the road in a clearly marked pedestrian right of way by a speeder late to work running a red light who had to brake to avoid killing me. I could recount other similar near- miss incidents, too numerous to mention. 

I drove for 36 years both in the US and abroad, and having spent 2 hours a day for years in an automobile on the D.C. Beltway, I am very familiar with the driving experience.

I saw it all in Washington; from cars driving down in the ditch avoiding traffic jams to people late for a meeting, and, stuck in traffic, running wildly around their auto, screaming at the world in general. 

During the sniper episode in D.C, I observed a man pull into a gas station, laying a high powered rifle across the top of his car while he filled up. The hammer on that 30/30 lever action was cocked. No one was going to hurt him or his chariot. 

There is a new kind of monkey these days - the technology monkey. That sucker will bury us if we don't learn to deal with him. We are so busy tending our gadgets and feeling entitled that we lose site of priorities, get wound up in minutia and end up in a meaningless zoo.  Road rage is becoming a certifiable illness.

Perhaps we should slow down, assess what is important, savor the time we have and consider respect for others. 

It is not difficult. It can become habit forming. And it just might feel good.

Ken 

http://about.me/smalltofeds