Slow!

July 13th, 2019| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

Allstate Insurance Company does an annual survey of America’s 200 largest cities and the average rating of their drivers from best (#1) to worst (#200).

#200? Baltimore, MD. Eight of the ten bottom-ranked cities are on the East Coast.

Ye olde city of Dallas, TX? #178. Worse than New York, NY, at #107!

But I’m proud to say that four of the top ten cities are in ye olde state of Texas; Brownsville (#1), Laredo (#6), Midland (#7), and McAllen (#9).

So, if you’re planning a vacation, come to Texas! You might survive on the roads.

Unsafe drivers and road rage are particularly closely linked, manifesting in honking horns, yelling abuse, gesturing obscenities, tailgating others, maneuvering dangerously ….

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration defines road rage as when a driver …

… commits moving traffic offenses so as to endanger other persons or property; an assault with a motor vehicle or other dangerous weapon by the operator or passenger of one motor vehicle on the operator or passengers of another motor vehicle.”

66% of traffic fatalities are caused by aggressive driving. 37% of aggressive driving incidents involve a firearm. Males under the age of 19 are the most likely to exhibit road rage. 2% of drivers admit to trying to run an aggressor off the road! Over a seven-year period, 218 murders and 12,610 injuries were attributed to road rage!

Apparently, there is a reason for all this. And “this” includes “Pedestrian Aggressiveness Syndrome,” when you act in hostile fashion towards fellow sidewalk users who are going too slow for you. There’s also slow internet, slow grocery lines, and slow DMV offices, that drive us crazy. Yup, there’s a reason for this.

Because the fast pace of society has distorted our sense of time.

Said neuroscientist, James Moore, at the University of London:

A lot is dependent on expectation—if we expect something to take time then we can accept it. Frustration is often a consequence of expectations being violated.”

Our expectations of speed are at an astronomical high, in this fast-paced world of ours.

Human movement has sped up from pre-modern to modern days 100-fold! Communication speed has gone up 10,000,000-fold! Data transmission by 10,000,000,000-fold!

Once upon a time, in 2006, we were OK with web pages loading in 4 seconds. In 2009, our patience threshold was shortened to 2 seconds in 2009. Now, it is estimated that we give up if our websites of interest don’t load in 0.25 seconds!

We want our fast food. We want speed reading. We want time-saving lifehacks. We want automation to buy ourselves more time … to go faster.

Speedy expectations!

And our internal clocks are rejigged based on these expectations. The more stimulation signals our brains receive per second, the more time we think has elapsed. And so, with all the signals hitting us from every noisy quarter, we get impatient, because we think, too much time is passing!

You might think that God who receives every signal from every place in the universe at every moment would be the most impatient of all.

You would be wrong.

The Lord is … is patient toward you,
not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.
2 Peter 3:9

So patience is a godly virtue, an integral component of the fruit of the Holy Spirit:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, …
Galatians 5:22

So …

So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved,
put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
Colossians 3:12

Go slow!