As our cars become more like hermetically sealed containers, and less like social-minded carriages, so road rage and dreadful driving and tarmac terror increase. Air conditioning, I suspect, is partly to blame (and let’s face, most new cars today have it). With aircon, we wind up our windows, shutting out the world. We live in our own little segregated cocoons. Screw everyone else. I am the measure of all things. I am the centre of the world!
Bless the droptop roadster, especially when the sun shines (as it does today). A friend has a Mazda MX-5 and last weekend I rode in it. Roadster drivers are surely the merriest of all motorists. There’s a smile a mile. Of course they are cars for sunny days; little wonder that their drivers have sunny dispositions.
Yet I suspect this cheerfulness is also a sign of their repeated interaction with the outside world – to the sun caressing their faces, to the wind fondling their hair, to the rich sweet scents of an English country day. Yet even in winter, thick jackets and hats trying to compensate for the lack of a roof, I invariably see happy drivers. Even in London, where rural scents are replaced by smelly soot, and kids in double-deck buses drop sweet wrappers into the cosy cabins, they smile!
To help breed a happier generation of drivers, I suggest specially reduced road tax for all cars that have folding hoods. And an extra tax on all cars with blacked out windows, invariably driven by the most selfish drivers of all.
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