Of course, I drive (I kind of have to because of the way our landscape is designed to mandate it), so I have to include myself in this. It’s well-established by psychological research that drivers have very little empathy for other drivers, but especially little empathy for bicyclists and pedestrians, viewing them as less-than-human annoyances. Add in that driving in a city requires that one subject other people to the noise, the pollution, the danger, and the arrogation of space by one’s vehicle, and you pretty much have to suppress any empathy for the people who live there, otherwise it’d be unbearable to do. That lack of empathy is textbook sociopathy, induced by the activity of driving. It just happens to be widely normalized, but we still see posts even here on Lemmy from new drivers who are struggling to suppress those thoughts.
SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social 20 hours ago
Of course, I drive (I kind of have to because of the way our landscape is designed to mandate it), so I have to include myself in this. It’s well-established by psychological research that drivers have very little empathy for other drivers, but especially little empathy for bicyclists and pedestrians, viewing them as less-than-human annoyances. Add in that driving in a city requires that one subject other people to the noise, the pollution, the danger, and the arrogation of space by one’s vehicle, and you pretty much have to suppress any empathy for the people who live there, otherwise it’d be unbearable to do. That lack of empathy is textbook sociopathy, induced by the activity of driving. It just happens to be widely normalized, but we still see posts even here on Lemmy from new drivers who are struggling to suppress those thoughts.