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Amidst looming civil war in Iraq, a Canadian couple brutally murdered in Cancun, Dubya's insistence that the United Arab Emirates should control American seaports (???!!!) and assorted other tales of calamity, I turned to this week's issue of Macleans in an effort to escape...only to be confronted with this on the cover:

"Flat screens. Wi-fi. Mini-fridges. iPod docks. Seats that heat, cool and massage.

IT'S NOT A CAR ANYMORE,

IT'S HOME"

Christ, I don't know what scares me the most out of all that. I mean, I can put warfare, random murders, and impending terrorism (does Bushie actually think any good can come out of ceding control of his ports to a country known to harbor terrorists?) --I can put all that out of my mind. With difficulty, granted, but I can do it.
But sooner or later I'm going to have to leave the house and travel on roads...roads filled with people who think they're in their own living rooms.
It's bad enough as it is now.
Those of you who have been with me a while know I do not drive. I sometimes think I'm the only non-handicapped 34-year-old male in the country without his driver's license. My vision is a very small part of the problem: indeed, my corrected vision is supposed to be just adequate for driving. A much larger part of the problem is something approaching an actual driving phobia.
I note that "fear of driving" doesn't even have a one-word name. There's a phobia for everything else under the sun, not to mention the sun itself--but none for driving a car. That's pretty telling.
I have no idea where my phobia came from. Usually with such things, there's a traumatic experience lurking somewhere in the deep past. But I've never been in a car accident, and certainly not during the all-too-brief period in my life when I actually drove. My dad's been in more car accidents than everyone else I know put together, but about 95% of them were intentional, controlled crashes: the man was a career cop.
My father, my stepfather, my mother, my wife--exceptional drivers all. So it's a bit of a mystery whence came this mental block.
In my own mind, I've rationalized my fear of driving--justified it. Ken, my mind says, you simply do not pay attention. You are capable of paying attention, yes, for a limited span of time, but then a thought will come in and you'll chase it right out the windshield and into that bridge abutment. Or maybe you'll be paying really close attention for...hell, even an hour straight...and a song will come on the radio and you'll suddenly find yourself...elsewhere...like, the Pearly Gates.
I'll try to shut that voice up, but the hell of it is, there's a good deal of truth in what it's saying. Plus, I've convinced myself that driving is the ultimate task--things happening ahead of you! beside you! on the other side! BEHIND YOU! Fuck, even ABOVE you...when some punk decides he's going to drop a chunk of concrete from that overpass up there. How all you normal people drive at all I can't imagine. How you seem to do it so effortlessly I don't want to imagine.
"The dilemma with driving", says Macleans, "has long been that, unless you are the proud owner of a Lamborghini Diablo, and you live and work on a closed track, it's a little boring." Boring. Yeah. Right. Hundreds of thousands of tons of steel and glass hurtling towards you each day at speeds guaranteed to turn you to pulp, and you're--yawn--a little bored. Thinking maybe you should take up skydiving. Or maybe Russian roulette.
And cars these days, says Macleans, are all about making that driving experience less boring...by offering a cornucopia of diversions to take your mind off that dull road ahead of you. Drop-down LCD monitors. Satellite TV recievers. Ford's about to come out with an optional mobile office system complete with a mounted tablet computer (with full Microsoft Office capabilities) and broadband internet access.
In your car. How long before somebody control-alt-deletes themselves right off the road? Maybe taking you with them?

You would think that, as a non-driver, I would be ecstatic about all these new automotive developments, things bringing us closer and closer to The Car That Drives Itself. You would be so very, very wrong.

Infiniti's new concept car doesn't have rearview mirrors. Instead, it uses rear-facing compact cameras and flip-up screens on either side of the instrument panel. And I don't know about you, but the first thing I think of is what do you do if all that whizbang circuitry fails? Lexus has a car out right now that has the closest thing to an autopilot seen yet. Its cruise control monitors the road ahead and will not let you hit anything, to the point where it will stop or swerve you all by itself. Honda's going one further: by 2016 they say that all their cars will be equipped with "Advanced Driver Assist" which basically drives the car forward for you on highways--oh, you do have to touch the steering wheel every ten seconds to let your car know you're still 'paying attention', and it will keep you in your lane and safe from harm. How long before somebody figures out they can just leave their hands on the wheel...and then, damnit, that road's so boring....falls asleep and never wakes up?

There's enough chicanery going on behind the wheel as it is. My personal and heretical opinion is that anyone caught using a cellphone behind the wheel should be charged with impaired driving. After all, studies have shown that people talking on handheld phones are four times more likely to crash (source) . They've actually determined the top ten worst foods to eat while driving:

--Coffee
--Hot soup
--Tacos
--Chili
--Hamburgers
--Barbecued food
--Fried chicken
--Jelly or cream filled doughnuts
--Soft drinks
--Chocolate

Knowing this, how many people specifically ask for a car without cupholders? Can you even buy such a thing nowadays? The Chevy Ventura, a way back in 1997, had seventeen of the fucking things. People, it seems, are just bound and determined to get their minds off all those ever-so-boring kids running out into traffic just ahead of them.
Even if I didn't have a driving phobia before, I would now.