We see it on the streets almost every day, even in a small city like Marshall, as drivers get upset with each other over minor traffic snarls.

They honk their horns. They gesture toward another driver, sometimes obscenely. They tailgate, as though they don’t know the meaning of a safe following distance.

That doesn’t describe every driver. Most, at least in our local area, are patient enough. We do have a certain percentage, however, who drive aggressively. They make driving difficult for everyone else.

I stay within speed limits, 30 miles per hour in town and 60 on most rural highways. Almost every day that means at least one driver will come up from behind and be impatient to get around me. They’re clearly speeding. They’re breaking the law, and maybe someday they’ll get ticketed.

It’s a concern when someone takes chances. It’s especially bad if they honk the horn or speed up even more to pass.

It’s a real sign of what machines often do to people. They dehumanize. Life behind the wheel can become a quest to get somewhere as fast as possible.

Some people don’t like to be inconvenienced. They don’t like it when another car gets in their way. They see a car and regard it as an obstacle. They lose sight of the fact that they’re dealing with another human being, probably someone with a family that depends on him or her.

That’s a dark side of what’s otherwise a vital element of life. The car has been important to people for more than a century.

It was seen as a huge breakthrough with our standard of living. Economic and political leaders had no qualms about letting almost everyone become a motorist. I don’t think there could have been any other alternative.

We’d have had to follow a vastly different path in the 20th century had we restricted transportation technology to a small share of society.

We would have needed to locate all necessary goods and services within every small town and every urban neighborhood. Average people would have had to walk everywhere. There would have been no suburbs filled with houses. It would have been impossible to drive out to a lake on weekends.

That’s why the automobile was welcomed so much for most of the 20th century. In recent years I’ve noticed a change in how some people view their cars. Some still love cars. Others treat them as a part of life that we need to put up with, as machines that guzzle gasoline and occasionally break down.

There’s a need for a good perspective. There’s a need for a good attitude every time someone drives. A driver who gets irritated or distracted by traffic is more likely to cause a collision.

I fortunately have never had an accident in 40 years of driving. It could always happen though. All it would take is someone running a stop sign or traffic light, or making a lane change without seeing me.

That doesn’t mean I want to stop driving down Main or College Drive. I do have aunts, uncles and cousins who avoid certain locations in the Twin Cities, or who plan their driving around rush hours. It’s different in a large metropolitan area.

In many ways urban residents are more dependent on cars than small city dwellers. We at least have a higher measure of safety on our streets and on our public transit system.

Someone without a car might therefore be able to move here and function using the alternatives. It’s a factor that might lead senior citizens, workers and college students to consider small cities and towns. They’re liveable in ways that large cities often aren’t.

Anyone who has a car should think of driving as a privilege rather than a right. We should drive free of emotion or distraction. We should drive defensively, since a little extra care could be enough to avoid an accident if someone else does the unexpected.

We need to realize that the streets and roads belong to everyone. In many ways that’s a good thing. It doesn’t matter how much money someone has or how valuable a vehicle might be. Everyone’s equal on the road. Traffic laws apply equally to all of us.

Being able to drive a car doesn’t give anyone an extra measure of power. Instead there’s the need to cooperate with others and to act like a good citizen.

— Jim Muchlinski is a longtime reporter and contributor to the Marshall Independent