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Illustration by Juliana Neufeld
My father taught me to drive almost 40 years ago. I still hear him sometimes.
“Watch who gets there first,” he says. “In case of a tie, yield to the car on the right.” Dad loved four-way stops. For my father, the four-way stop was proof that humans could behave rationally for the good of all.
I still feel an uptick of trepidation as I approach one, cars inching forward from all compass points, drivers impatient with taking turns. I know who goes first and who goes next, but it is always a negotiation.
Dad taught history and English, and sometimes Driver’s Ed. He loved to drive. He loved the highway, but he especially loved busy streets with their thousand little understandings among strangers.
A four-way stop runs on rules, but requires judgment. One must be alert about who goes first, second, third. One must be civil. Even following strict directions, letting someone else go ahead feels like polite deferral, a favour paid to strangers. Paradoxically, it is through favours and patience and waiting one’s turn that everyone most efficiently gets where they want to go. And maybe that explains his fondness for the four-way stop: It was civilization in micro.
That is a lot to hang on the functioning of an intersection. But it makes sense. For how protected and anonymous we feel, encased in an automobile, behaving in ways we never would if we met each other in person, looking each other in the eye. In a car, respecting another’s humanity is an act of self-command.
One summer, Dad taught me to drive stick shift, when my job required me to make weekly newspaper deliveries with a large pickup truck. I remember stalling out repeatedly in the middle of a busy roundabout. I looked anxiously in the rear-view mirror.
“Don’t worry about them,” Dad said. And I seem to recall that no one honked at me. I might not get away with that today. Today, everyone seems angry. In a hurry. Me-first. Now I roll to a stop at the white line and assess. Should I let that tentative youngster in a student-driver car have the right of way to which they are entitled? If they hesitate too long, I fully expect to hear an angry horn, see a thrown middle finger.
My father believed that people are naturally inclined to do the right thing, to get along, to not hinder others’ enjoyment of life. But that depends on a shared feeling of reciprocity. When the unwritten contract between humans is broken, when kindness becomes weakness, then all bets are off.
“Civilization is a thin veneer,” my father used to say in his history class. I think civil society is more like chemistry, as in whatever it is that binds atoms together. It’s everywhere, but also completely local. At any one place, it is weak and fragile. I suppose that makes me a pessimist. On the other hand, behind the wheel, I am not powerless. I can uphold the bond, here at the humble four-way stop.
The bond is not politeness. What inspires me is the deeper lesson my father imparted to me behind the wheel: the conviction that providing for other people’s safety, freedom and well-being does not automatically come at the cost of my own. A conviction, newly radical it seems, that individuals and nations better succeed when everyone gets ahead, not only a privileged, self-interested few.
One day, the power went out in our neighbourhood and the traffic lights were dark. The busy intersection at the foot of our suburban hill had to be negotiated as an impromptu four-way stop. It became immediately evident how well or poorly drivers have internalized the rules. I wish Dad were here. He would have relished the display of respect and skill put to the test. He never gave up his driver’s license; he let it expire. I insist on the distinction. To yield is a deliberate act.
Oh, that he could be here in the passenger seat beside me, telling me not to mind the drivers behind me, to yield when I should yield, and sedately go when I should go. How I miss him.
Kevin MacDonell lives in Bedford, N.S.
