Now I've been driving for a good part of my life (More years spent driving than not driving. I got started when turning nine. Hey, we lived on a farm). My driving style and parking behavior has remained the same for most of that time. I would categorize it as defensive, though I am well versed and sometimes also give gas. What can I say, I want to have fun. What I find amazing is the reaction of the other motorists to this driving behavior, it is completely different depending on which vehicle I'm sitting in.
Motorists can be such car elitist.
Due to my professional and private situation, the range of my driving ranges/has ranged from the Dodge Rams to even a Bentley (though that is a story for another day). In fact I was in everything from the compact to the Porsche convertible. With all the vehicles, I play the game of connecting green lights.
People generously forgive all these small and bigger sins when you're sitting in an less expensive vehicle (not the Porsche and Bentley).
Honestly!
You're one of them; the hodgepodge of Fords, Chrysler, and cheaper imports. I mean I virtually never got honked at, someone has surely honked, though it was extremely rare. Compare this to the gestures and honking when I was sitting in an old vehicle, or one with a lower price tag than the average while indulging in my little driving sins.
Compare this to the Porsche and Bentley, this is very different. And it is something that I noticed when the steering wheel in my hands belonged to an upper-class model or even a luxury class. The hatred and envy that was regularly unloaded in the form of honking, close up, pejorative gestures down to the middle finger and a few times even in pieces of paper on the car, which were supposed to be funny but were actually just ugly. It was not about parking, but about the type of car that stood on the white line and did not properly two inches next to it. Basically, a small car is also there to allow you to merge into bottlenecks faster.
Why are we so envious?
Why can't we nod appreciatively when a particularly nice car drives past us, as in the USA?
Personally I left the trucks on the farm. I also don't buy that big of cars any more, because I love my compacts, which has everything that makes me happy about a car. The Bentley was nice, the Porsche was fast, but what they didn't have my compact does. Take seat heating, air conditioning (okay, the others had this too, but AC in a convertible is nonsense), it's practical, and it has a good sound system, which is important in any car which I own, because I need beautiful music when driving, that's more important to me than the satisfying sound from the exhaust pipes and from raw horsepower. But that is just me.
I have bought all but two of my cars. My indulgences included.
But what did people think of me when I was sitting in them (my indulgences):
- who do you think she has to sleep with so that she can drive this car?
- how much time of her life did she have to sacrifice and what did she do without for her career so that she could afford this car?
- what a creep, she has to wear a suit now in middle of summer, I wouldn't want to swap the fattest business car for that!
- does she still a lot of payments to make so that she can continue to drive beyond her means?
Sometimes I just think … Wow… What a great car … I can rejoice just in the sight, it is like a flower, beautiful architecture or other optical enrichments.
But I don't look at the driver and judge them by the horsepower and list prices, I don't think little of them or overestimate him.
It's just sheet metal after all, … One is more expensive, another cheaper and in every car sits someone who, like you and I, has grief, worry and hardships, who is happy when you're nice to him.
I was always the same person in every car and received so many different reactions. Tolerant, colorful, the lovers and haters.
Too bad, actually ❤