A car emboldens the roaring male ego. Safe in a fast-moving cage of steel and glass. Photo / Getty Images
I have a question to pose. But first I'd like to walk you through a second and a half of my morning.
I had stopped at a T-junction in my big and dirty car. 'Look right, look left, look right again', I was taught aged 5, 'if all clear, quick march'. I hear it still at road junctions, an unvoiced charm against disaster. Give me a child till he's 7 …
I looked right. Nothing was emerging from the Lyttelton road tunnel. I looked left. Nothing was coming along Norwich Quay. I pulled out, looking right again as I did so. But now something had emerged from the Lyttelton road tunnel and it was heading straight toward me at speed.
How I had failed to see it I did not know, but that was not my primary concern at the moment. My primary concern was survival. I put my foot down. My big and dirty car is still game. We avoided contact, but it had been close-ish. I was entirely at fault.
Once I was out of any danger, and the gulp of fear had subsided in throat and shoulders, what occupied my mind as I turned into the Lyttelton road tunnel and checked in my mirror to see if he had turned around and followed me, was the behaviour of the other driver.
For as I pulled out across his bows he did not brake. Nor did he turn the wheel. He had clearly calculated we were not going to crash so he took the opportunity to sound his horn. He leant on it long and hard. His face was a rictus of rage and I could see him richly cursing me, calling me words my mother would have pretended she didn't know.
Now the Road Code decrees that the horn should be used only to let another driver know that you are there. This man did not need to let me know he was there. He knew I knew he was there because I was looking straight at him. And he knew I knew he was there because of the momentary horror on my face.
Now, there are two possible explanations for my driving. One is that I was suicidal, that I wanted to crash. But that theory falls apart when you note that I was clearly accelerating away from the possible point of collision. So we're left with the other explanation which is that I had made a mistake.
For some reason - distractedness, failing eyesight, whatever - I had failed to register the presence of the other car until it was almost too late. It was an innocent, if potentially lethal, mistake.
So there was no reason for the man to sound his horn. The mistake had been made and could not be unmade. And no blast on the horn was going to cure me of my tendency to error.
He sounded his horn, however, for a different reason. He sounded his horn to let me know that I had committed the unpardonable offence of impeding - or in reality, coming close to impeding - this man's royal progress on the Queen's highway.
He was in the right and thrilled to be so because it meant he was in a position to condemn another driver. Hence his instantaneous unrestrained anger. Hence the abuse that he strove to make me hear. He was revelling in his own supremacy.
A car emboldens the roaring male ego. Safe in a fast-moving cage of steel and glass the braggart male is free from the consequences of his aggression. He can bellow his testosterone like a stag in rut.
So there we have it, the one and a half seconds and they do not present a pretty picture. On the one hand we have fallible man, the man who makes mistakes. On the other we have aggressive man, the man who believes he is right. And both of us driving a ton of glass and metal going at speeds that kill.
Which brings me to my question: how is it that the road toll is so low? On an average day less than one person a day dies on our roads, the roads that teem with fallible fools like me and aggressive fools like him, the hordes of us travelling in opposite directions and separated only by a line of paint and a set of dimly remembered road rules. How come so few of us die?