On the roads of Paris and social justice

I proudly got my driving licence at the first possibility, which in Canada is at sweet sixteen. For about ten years after, I was bracing Canadian roads and highways, which as any local driver knows are of variable quality, repeatedly abused by all that snow and ice and the omnipresent trucks. And yet, for all those unwieldily roads, the thought of not driving in Toronto never occurred to me. What's an odd pothole or a some ice flying in the windshield compared to the four-wheel liberty? A spot on a otherwise spotless window - I looked past it, as would anyone else.

Almost five years after moving to France, I am ashamed to say I have never sat at the steering wheel. At first, I told myself it's because the subway system is so efficient. Then, I told myself it's because all cars are standard and I didn't feel like nervously shifting around in Parisian traffic. And then, we bought a BMW - an automatic BMW of all - taking away all reason from my little self-excuses and rationalisations. A year after taking possession of the keys of the sleek black beauty, I have still never made contact with the car, except in the capacity of a passenger.

I thought it might be time for that moment of reckoning. Sitting in the passenger seat of my little BMW, which was struggling to make it's way amongst a myriad of motos, velos, buses and small trucks, I realised that I have no desire to ever drive in Paris. It is not that I have any other preferred method of transport - aside from having a designated driver of course! It's more that I find the sight of the co-existence of all the modes of transport in this city slightly unsettling. I should probably admit having witnessed a few velo and moto accidents involving unusual and I would say, by the looks of them, unintended, pirouettes of their drivers in the air.

But then, the voice in my head which was asking persistently "but what about that BMW patiently waiting in the garage?" had a little victory. I decided to seriously consider what lied between me and that little BMW. And is then that I realised: in Paris, the roads are certainly better then in Canada, despite being oh-so-narrow, winding and inevitably one-way (with no logical means to return to the point of original departure). The issue, as it occurred to me, is not with the roads per se, it's more with the road attitude and with the social norms of driving in Paris, the latter courtesy of our Mayor Delanoe.

First, on the road attitude since it's easy to summarise in a few words - jungle where survival of the fittest is the natural organisational premise. Think Italy minus the "mamma mia!" In practical terms, this translates to having to close one's eyes while accelerating as fast as possible to cut off any possibility of being cut off yourself, especially by motos which appear to operate according entirely different rules of the game. All in all, egoistic driving on one lane roads make for an interesting experience, but that even that does not explain all my reluctance to drive in Paris.

I think the real issue is that I realise that driving a BMW in Paris I would be at the bottom of the social food chain. I should probably explain that in Paris, a car driver is seen as a nuisance by socialist velos proudly cutting them at the first opportunity precisely because they can. The velo drivers know full well that if so much as a hair were to fall of their socialist head, the mean car driver would be indisputably at fault (that polluting asshole!). Motos generally have the same attitude, but given their slightly bigger vrumph, they generally consider themselves to be outside of the rules. Buses now have their dedicated lanes, the logic of which I have to admit is difficult to undersand, but which velos use, along with pedestrian walkways. Only taxis are allowed to share bus lanes.

It seems that unless you own a decent car, rules of the game are quite flexible indeed. On the other hand, if you are fortunate enough to be able to afford a car, you'll be the unfortunate creature of permanent abuse on Parisian streets. Velos will force you to drive behind them at twenty per hour as their owners run out of their last breath. Taxis will treat you as as an asylum seeker in the land where they already have permanent residence. Delivery trucks - which have the wonderful habit of stopping exactly in the middle of those one way streets - will not see you as an eventual customer of whatever it is they are delivering, but as an annoying asshole honking behind.

But wait for the best part. And that is that cops, who don't really care for infringements by all of the above, love to stop people in cars which they themselves cannot afford - if anything out of pure spite. Giving out tickets to cars is also a matter of social justice - re-distributing finances from those polluting assholes to the poor velo driver type, even if the latter plows though all red lights of the city. Also, giving a ticket to a BMW driving lawyer or economist makes the statistics go up- since those are the types that tend to actually pay their tickets! Bingo.

Alas, we might not be living in a communist state as many Americans like to think, but that does not mean that those with big powers (the mayor) or little ones (the cops) would not use them to make their version of social justice. The slogan of their party goes something like this: ride the public transport, or be ridden on by public servants. And that about summarises all my fears of french roads.

While in some measure they may be related to the tense co-existence of all commuters, they are perhaps in a larger measure related to my inferior status in the jungle of riders. And so after all this reflection, I decided that in the absence of any more re-assuring methods of transport, I will adopt a pure Carie Bradshaw attitude, continuing to prance around the cobblestone roads of Paris with my nose high up, knowing that on the sidewalk, I am not at the bottom of the social hierarchy.