Stranger danger

[Martin Cassini]

There is too much fear on the road - a sort of generalised stranger danger. As fellow humans, drivers don't want to bully pedestrians, but the rules of road tell them to ditch their manners in obedience to a system of control which takes absolute precedence. We are cowed into submission by rules which make us cow others into submission. The scenario I'm picturing: waiting to cross the road as a pedestrian and being ignored by streams of traffic (4 July post, Grotesque); and as a driver, wanting to give way to side road traffic or peds, but being prevented from doing so by closely-following traffic.