Poof!

"A fool or a knave at the driving wheel of a motor vehicle is far more dangerous both to the public and to himself than a fool or a knave on the driver's seat of a hay wagon. Hence, on this latter-day road, the crucial challenge is no longer technological but psychological. . . . The old challenge of physical distance has been transmuted into a new challenge of human relations between drivers who have learned how to 'annihilate distance' and have thereby put themselves in constant danger of annihilating one another."

British Historian Arnold Toynbee (A Study of History) thus describes part of the price our civilization has paid in solving the problem of transport. Americans have their own way of saying it: "the nut that holds the wheel." California last week saw a crash that even Americans might remember a few days.

A line of cars hurtled down a six-lane highway in bright daylight. Suddenly, a shift in the wind whipped smoke from a burning garbage dump across the highway, forcing one driver to slow down. In a moment, the line became a screeching, telescoping, side-swiping shambles; 25 ears were wrecked or damaged; 13 people were injured, seven hospitalized. But, except for the number of cars involved, it was routine. Nobody had been killed.

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