In the safety and comfort of your car

A basic underlying idea of having a car for personal transport is that it provides a safe and comfortable space that protects the traveler from the outside environment and a personal space that cannot easily be intruded upon by others. This basic feature is exemplified by various car adverts focusing on private comfort, luxury, safety, space etc…

Why then, I wonder, I felt pretty much boxed in the other day I was commuting to work in my car. Agreed it was a typical day with other commuter vehicles around me but I was snug in my car and inching my personal space through the traffic. For some reason I couldn’t feel, for lack of better words, ‘my space’.

Hmm… I closed the car windows, switched on the air conditioning, re-adjusted my seat and popped in a music CD to shut out the ever excited RJ’s shouting out my speakers.

I was just starting to relax when the car in front jumped forward giving me some space to move ahead. Practiced reflexes released the brakes to press the accelerator and the clutch was relaxed in smooth harmony, but the gracefulness of the moment was broken, I had to abort and slam the brakes as the person on my right tried to inch their private space in the same empty space ahead and managed to angle it in just enough to prevent my straight line motion.

Quickly moving into 2D space and with minor corrections on my power-steering and short accelerated bursts I angled myself to inch ahead and block the intended lane change. In my mind I was the spacewalking NASA astronaut maneuvering with utmost precision to fix a problem. But instead of NASA ground control congratulating me I was greeted with loud and insistent honking from the commuter on my left. Irritated I thought, “Relax man, I am just protecting my space from this #$%^head”. From then on until the signal turned I was ready like the crouching tiger and as soon as it was green I leapt and reclaimed what was mine. “Hah!!, take that you $@#$@#$”.

Five minutes later it happened again and then once more near my office and a last time when approaching the car park. I finally relaxed on my desk triumphant at having defended my space successfully 3 times out of 5, better than the average so far this week.

Being a stickler to detail and acquired compulsive hair splitting I realized there was a slight difference – I was defending ‘my vehicle space’ since ‘my space’ was always with me inside the car. But then ‘my vehicle space’ was almost as important or even more so than ‘my space’ since I did not feel comfortable when it was intruded upon, it felt so personal.

So to put it more accurately
‘my space’ (while driving) = ‘my personal space’ + ‘my vehicle space’

Feeling very scientific here are the corollaries I extracted:

– a bigger vehicle increases both personal space and vehicle space. For e.g. driving an SUV on Commercial Street (a very busy one-way street in Bangalore, India) will extend your space right into the shops on both sides and overlap the space occupied by the vehicles in the front and back.

– in personal vehicles ‘my space’ is directly proportional to vehicle size and indirectly proportional to the vehicles around. So a 4WD SUV next to a compact hatchback is akin to a horse next to a rabbit, but next to a multi-axle bus its a horse next to an elephant.

What are your inferences?