A Problem with your Automobile

Motorbikes in Saigon, Vietnam; the Cathedral of Notre Dame is in the background.

There is a problem with automobiles, and I'm not talking about break-downs or pollution.  I'm talking about how they seal us off from the world around us.  Listen to this excerpt from Paul McHugh's "The Purse Jones of It," as he compares the automobile to the motorbike:

By contrast, most human drivers of automobiles remain well-insulated from the world through which they pass.  Manufacturers may hype a certain hot model's handling, but primarily, a modern car is created to isolate you from the landscape.  There's cushy suspension to homogenize the surface of the terrain, stereophonic music to mask its sounds, plus an air-conditioner capable of wiping out any ambient climate.

In my travels, particularly in Southeast Asia where culture and climate converge to make the motorbike a popular mode of transportation, I take great pleasure in hanging out at intersections and watching people come to a stop.  As they wait for the light to turn red, people on motorbike may say a word to the neighbor beside them.  On some motorbikes, an entire family of five or six people may be present, the mother throwing a baby from one hip to the other or perhaps whispering something into her husband's ear.  I love of how scores of feet descend onto the pavement as the people wait for the light to turn green.

My post is neither meant to bash the automobile nor to make light of the impracticality of motorbike ownership if you live in a city that has winter.  It is merely to wonder aloud if our cars can be too much like cocoons, where we wrap ourselves up into isolated bubbles, too much detached from the people and world around us.

On those days when I am back in the States and missing Southeast Asia, I sometimes want to jump on a plane and go back.  But in lieu of that, I generally settle for rolling my window down and, once I'm at a stop light, shooting a quick smile to the inhabitants of the car beside me.