He touched my car

[dellzeqq]

If you did that to my car you'd soon have your hand on the road, because I'd get out of my car and put you on your arse. Have respect for other people and that includes their property.

I think this sums it up. Car drivers can be touchy (tish-boom). For some of them driving a car is like having a special friend that does as he or she is told. As others have said, garden fences don't have quite the same priority. Whatever we're dealing with in Green1's post it's not about the car as a means of conveyance - it's about the car as identifier, as the significant other in the life of the driver.

And that's why I don't do it anymore - I rather enjoy life and don't need the disappointment in humanity that this mania brings about.

 

[Oldspice]

What gives anyone the right to touch someone else's property. It's not like your trying to mark your territory?

 

[Norm]

I have just one issue with DZ's post... It should be badum-tish, not tish-boom.

 

[Oldspice]

Just simple manners

 

[dellzeqq]

What gives anyone the right to touch someone else's property. It's not like your trying to mark your territory?

what gives anybody the right not to have their property touched? The answer is social convention. Thirty years ago cyclists would routinely lean on cars at lights because we had complicated straps around our feet. Now we have clipless pedals. The convention has changed over time, while, at the same time, the car has become the grand consumer fetish item. Now car drivers object. It's a social thing, not a rights thing.

 

[dellzeqq]

Just simple manners

you can't have it both ways. Is it rights or is it manners? And when were manners simple?

 

[screenman]

SRW, there is a market for detailing in every country. In fact you might just find a bigger market in Italy than the UK.

 

[dellzeqq]

SRW, there is a market for detailing in every country. In fact you might just find a bigger market in Italy than the UK.

are you one of those people who pimp rides?

 

[screenman]

Not really, part of my business is teaching PDR and WSR many guys who do detailing try and add these to their business. Personally I have no interest in cars other than I make my living from them, I used to be more enthusiastic in my younger years.

 

[screenman]

Class

 

[Boris Bajic]

what gives anybody the right not to have their property touched? The answer is social convention. Thirty years ago cyclists would routinely lean on cars at lights because we had complicated straps around our feet. Now we have clipless pedals. The convention has changed over time, while, at the same time, the car has become the grand consumer fetish item. Now car drivers object. It's a social thing, not a rights thing.

This is an odd one. I was driving 30 years ago and recall nobody leaning on my car at lights. I had a 2cv then, probably a car that invites hands more than most others.

I was also cycling 30 years ago (with rat cages) and do not recall needing to lean on cars. One might hang back and wobble, but not lean on cars.

I think motor cars have been a 'grand consumer fetish item' (your phrase) throughout those thirty years. For some people, but not for most of us.

I believe many car drivers would have objected thirty years ago to cyclists' hands and many still would today. Some might be the same motorists.

The 'road-ragey' aggressive nature of the objection might be a little more fierce these days, but the general ubiquity of objection is probably much as it was.

I agree with you that it's not a 'rights thing'. I'm not sure how it could be. It is a matter of manners. Like holding doors open for people and helping people with prams up steps.

It's not a terrible crime to lean on cars, ignore people following you through a door or let a parent with a pram struggle up steps on the tube.... It's just poor form.

For me it starts and ends with manners.

 

[Dan B]

So I have to ask: for the people saying that leaning on cars is wrong but street furniture (signposts, railings etc) are OK, why the distinction? Somebody pays to have that railing maintained

 

[Crosstrailer]

This is an odd one. I was driving 30 years ago and recall nobody leaning on my car at lights. I had a 2cv then, probably a car that invites hands more than most others.

I was also cycling 30 years ago (with rat cages) and do not recall needing to lean on cars. One might hang back and wobble, but not lean on cars.

I think motor cars have been a 'grand consumer fetish item' (your phrase) throughout those thirty years. For some people, but not for most of us.

I believe many car drivers would have objected thirty years ago to cyclists' hands and many still would today. Some might be the same motorists.

The 'road-ragey' aggressive nature of the objection might be a little more fierce these days, but the general ubiquity of objection is probably much as it was.

I agree with you that it's not a 'rights thing'. I'm not sure how it could be. It is a matter of manners. Like holding doors open for people and helping people with prams up steps.

It's not a terrible crime to lean on cars, ignore people following you through a door or let a parent with a pram struggle up steps on the tube.... It's just poor form.

For me it starts and ends with manners.

Well said Boris

 

[dellzeqq]

So I have to ask: for the people saying that leaning on cars is wrong but street furniture (signposts, railings etc) are OK, why the distinction? Somebody pays to have that railing maintained

well, exactly. Our Wallace Arnold correspondent has to come up with an explanation of how manners are formed, not least because manners cover incivility as much as they promote civility.

In the end it depends on the terms of trade within public life. BB may not remember leaning on cars, but I do - it was a matter of course thing on the Sunday morning ride down to Brighton. I suspect that about thirty years ago the terms of trade changed, and that cars became more precious to their owners, and, again, I suspect that this was because life became less certain and less secure. There is, in this country, a gap between the expectations of deference on the part of those who would be deferred to, and the deference (or lack of deference) shown by those who are supposed to defer, and that gap is usually disguised by separation, and the break in that separation (for instance when somebody puts a hand on a car) in public space sometimes gives rise to the paranoid reaction so happily described by Green1.

Although it was a lighthearted post, I do genuinely think that touching a car is an educative thing - for the reasons I set out above. It does the car driver a power of good, if he did but know it.

I have a confession to make. I'm given to rapping lightly on the bodywork of a car if I want it to move away from me - this usually happens when a car is sliding left in a lane coming up to a traffic light, expecting me to somehow dissolve in to nothingness. Occasionally I'll rap on the window. For me it's a functional thing, but for the car driver it's a shocking thing. Sometimes it provokes wrath, but most of the time it's just shock. I think it's because it frightens them. It inverts that 'natural' order of things. But, still and all, it's an educative thing, and I like to think that they benefit from it........

oh - to compare touching a car with not helping someone up the stairs with a pram is a categorical mistake. The two are different things.

 

[Longshot]

I think this sums it up.

It sums something up but not what's being discussed here.