Driving’s a funny old thing: some go wild for it, some are unmoved by it (metaphorically, at least), and some endure it with gritted teeth. Poor Machell is so ill-starred as to be in the last camp. But he, and his fellow elatophobes, need not suffer, so long as the Rules of the Road are fresh in the minds of all. Yes, I know you don’t commit the three cardinal sins of driving: tailgating, failing to indicate, and speeding like a maniac in residential areas. But, setting aside your hastily-crammed and hazily-remembered ‘Theory’ knowledge, it really is time to reflect once more upon some common courtesies of carriage:
1 – If you throw litter from your car, immediately follow this protocol: stop the car (checking mirror), shout ‘you are a disgrace!’ (addressing mirror), leave the car (checking traffic), ask for forgiveness (addressing traffic), locate the litter (checking plastic content), and eat it whole (addressing plastic content). There is no other acceptable course of action.
2 – Don’t personalise your number-plate. You’re driving a mass-manufactured machine, not an extension of your precious self. And no, don’t think that changing the font, italicising it or whimsically altering its kerning is going to demonstrate that you’re edgy: the authorities will already have you registered with the standard-issue plate ‘TO55 POT’. There is a possible exception to this: if a personalised number-plate was the wayward peccadillo of an earlier generation, it may be kept as an inherited curioso; Machell saw not so long ago ‘A3’ on a road-weary Volvo, which elicited (much to his surprise) an approving nod from him as he raced past on his gig.
3 -If you’re driving a lorry, it must (I grant) be pretty dull chugging along snailwise in the slow lane. But, if you really must overtake your HGV brethren, choose your moment wisely. One tip: that moment is not the beginning of an upwards incline, when your pedal-to-the-metal acceleration will allow you to gain one foot every ten seconds on the (now uncharitably accelerating) overtakee, thereby causing chaos for every other driver capable of a respectable speed.
4- Driving can be the source of real – even hypermachellian – frustration. If things get so heated that you feel you need even to employ your digits to convey your annoyance, be sure to use the two-fingered salute; the middle-fingered jab is a regrettable American importation and should be propagated no further.
5 – When driving on the motorway, remember that you’re filming neither the advert for an incongruously-named deodorant nor the closing scene of a saccharine 1970s drama – so stop hogging the middle lane and get leftlike any self-respecting citizen. Machell refuses, of course, to make this point by undertaking you, but may give a drive-by glare as he overtakes.
6 – Unless your passion for nature compels you to make rabbits of your fellow drivers at night, be sure to dip your full-beam headlights when passing traffic. There are no exceptions. If you’ve changed your headlights to a jaunty variant of white, change them back. And if you’re driving a lorry, stop decorating the back of your man-cab with an epilepsy-inducing wall of blue and red flashing lights like a demented late-80s disc-jockey.
7 – Never pip the horn, unless (i) it’s a matter of life-or-death survival, or (ii) you’re bidding adieu to close friends or family after a stay of multiple days.
8 – If you’re stuck in slow-moving traffic, don’t waste your energy monitoring the flow of adjacent lanes through the tears of a clown, and changing in and out of them like a punch-drunk politician. You really won’t expedite your progress forward but really will retard the host of bemused drivers around you.
9 – If, having magnanimously let a waiting driver go before you, there emerges no nod, wave or flash of gratitude from their quarter, do the polite thing and become white-hot with anger at these miserable ingrates. Be sure, as a true British driver, to give no outward sign of this catatonic ire.
10 -If your navigation is so utterly dependent upon a ‘Sat[anic?]Nav[vy?]’ that you no longer deign even to glance at road signs, unplug your device and get off the road safely before yor drive off it at pace, serenaded by the dulcet instruction to ‘Make a U-turn at the foot of the cliff’.
11 – If you pull up adjacent to a car at a junction, remember that you have only one second’s credit to expend on looking at other folk to the left and right. Anything more will be sure to set off the fight, flight or fright reflex.
12 – For some unknown reason, cars are inflating like balloons: massive they are, with hips, shoulders and what younger clubmen call ‘booty’. Even if you’re suffering the same phenomenon yourself, don’t buy into this fad. Cars – at least according to traditional physics – should be slick, aerodynamic playthings, not grotesque, wheel-welded whales. The urban 4×4 is no exception. Those perpetuating this modern tragedy of cultural appropriation should pay a dozen-fold mark-up on the Congestion Charge, itself doubled if they are inexplicably driving in Hunters.
13 – Don’t have your windows tinted, whoever you be. And don’t wear sunglasses when driving – or really at any time. There’s no surer sign at twenty paces of genuine self-delusion than these perverse tools of benightment.
14 – If you’re doing the school run in a car, show and teach your wee ones the twin rules of good parental driving. First, don’t park within 500m of the school: walk in the close like a set of responsible bipeds. Second, should you live less than one kilometre from the school, walk the entirety. Thus, with these small steps, begins a revolution.
15 – Never, ever steal a parking space from someone who is patiently waiting for it. Dante left in the ninth circle of his Inferno a particular place for these reprobates – each condemned to have his own space incessantly invaded by his accursed neighbours every time his eyes close from the torment of Luciferous lollipop ladies gnawing off his bespoke driving gloves. (My Toscanois admittedly sketchy.)
