I used to love cars and driving, now they disgust me, along with the whole my-car-is-my-identity culture.
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I live in fly-over country, and cars, pretty much all of them, are monstrously large now. I notice the change, even to 15-20 years ago. Just as a small example; the physical experience of just being in a parking lot now, it's gotten really foul. The rooflines of cars parked on the street now block the view outside my local coffee shop. Not sure if this is real, but there seems more of that casual sociopathic driving (weaving in an out of traffic, texting, tailgating, ...). I'm not exaggerating, any given day and I likely see, with my own eyes, the aftermath of a wreck.
It's absolutely insane to me. It's a true saying; "things can always get worse". I feel like we're finding that out now. The public realm is just worse. Straight up. Worse. More deadly, violent, unwelcoming. And it's cars. The only concrete thing really. Big, fast going cars. Slow them down, have them smaller. And immediately, almost from day one, life outside is better.
> whole my-car-is-my-identity culture
This is not projection, it's a core truth. Many americans have reified independence into an extremely specific material _thing_. Big cars. Even if not all, then still enough to hold everybody else hostage.
It's silly at first, but the more you think about it, the more it makes sense why driving has gotten so miserable. Our little monkey-brains see angry faces all around us, and we act more defensively. We feel the need to defend ourselves from all the scary metal boxes, leading to buying scarier looking boxes. It's an angry-headlights arms race.
That's the thing, it's not "little" in my book, but a full sized car. It comfortably fits an average family (or a group of four adults) and their stuff for a week-long vacation.
> same size as a first or second generation Landrover Discovery It's 25 % lower and 5 % narrower than the first generation, but I understand that the Discovery is an off-road car, and I also consider it a full sized car, just like mine. The evolution should've stopped (or been regulated) right around there.
Yeah, Rapid is a bit on the long size ;-)
But agree - I wouldn't like to drive that outside of the EU. It feels kinda weird to be (sometimes below) eye level with some car hoods...
Projection much?