Cars Restrained

The Department of Transportation announced Thursday that the number of people killed in highway crashes 33,000 deaths last year was the lowest since 1954.

A Rebbe was once quoted as saying, Try everything once but that does not include driving a car–don’t even bother. Perhaps what the Rebbe found so repugnant about the automobile was the rote way required to learn to drive. Driving does not engage the mind, but on the contrary numbs the senses.

Better roads and safer cars undoubtably account for a large part of the reduction in deaths and injuries but the acceptance of rote behavior as a model citizen is alarming. The greatest commodity given to the human being is freedom of choice and driving car is very restrictive because of precise laws and practices comprising the rules of the road.

Rote actions are an offshoot of religion demanding total control over the lives they shepherd to reduce the amount of short term suffering. Accidents can never be completely wiped out since God needs occasional accidents to take us out of the world.

The Torah is more concerned with how we move spiritually than physically; the Cabala gives us the answers to time and space–the ancients were known to have wisdom concerning the pathways in the heavens but the vehicles they rode were not technological.