Behind the Auto Mask

In civilized society, the most effective curb on a man's behavior may be the scrutiny of his fellow man. It is only behind his mask that the Mardi Gras reveler loses his inhibitions and dares to act as he feels. So it is with today's driver, says one of Germany's leading sociologists. To reduce the slaughter of "that guerrilla war we call traffic," Bielefeld University Professor Helmut Schelsky advocates doing away with anonymity on the highway. How? As a first step, he would put names instead of number plates on cars. At the very least, he would let the police give out, on request, names corresponding to license numbers, or, as in Switzerland, publish license directories.

The problem, says Schelsky, is that the car is depersonalizing. It leads to aggression because drivers "no longer meet each other on a person-to-person basis, but remain anonymous behind the mask of an apparatus called the automobile. People who would be very polite to each other meeting face to face in a doorway will turn into aggressive idiots behind the wheel." The solution: "To complement the three big Es (engineering, enforcement, education) with two big Ps--personalization and politicization."

In his personalization drive, Schelsky would invoke the force of peer-group pressure: he would make good driving socially rewarding, dangerous driving socially reprehensible, perhaps by keeping a man's friends posted on his "driving morality." Explains the professor: "If, in his own office, a person is considered an exemplary driver or an antisocial one, this may carry more weight than a discount on car insurance or a secretly paid fine."

Victims of Technology. By way of politicization, Schelsky envisions demonstrations against unsafe driving like those against the Viet Nam War. Such devices, he believes, would help the public recognize the enormity of traffic casualties. "Why," he asks, "do the war dead arouse more protest in us than the victims of technology?"

Even if a safer car results from Ralph Nader's campaign, Schelsky foresees no significant reduction in accidents without personalization and politicization. It is behavior that must be changed, he says, because it is man, not the machine, that is at fault.

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