Daddy the Rowdy

Viennese adults, proud of their culture and heritage, are seemingly oblivious to their uncivilized behavior in automobiles. Not so their children. Asked by Vienna's mass-circulation Kurier to submit letters describing the driving habits of their fathers, several hundred schoolchildren, aged 9 to 14, handed down a nearly unanimous verdict: the Viennese male, normally mild-mannered, becomes a raging brute behind the wheel.

"You will not believe such a lovely father can curse so badly," one child wrote. Complained another: "Father shouted at pedestrians, Mother shouted at Father, and they both got so cross my father almost lost control of himself and the car." Or " 'You arse with ears!' my father shouted" and " 'You ox, you stupid cowboy, why don't you stay in your pastures?' And the other driver said, 'Shut your trap, there's a draft.' "

"At first it is cold and the engine will not start," one child wrote, "so Father's cursing starts right away. Then a car passes us, and Father curses the driver. He has to step on the brakes. When he starts again, we continue our excursion and our cursing." From a 14-year-old boy: "My father is a real rowdy behind the wheel. He has been stopped more than 40 times by his archenemy, the village policeman. I'm sure when I grow up I shall not be like that."

Viennese Psychiatrist Harald Leupold-Loewenthal is not so sure. "In Austria," he says, "a car is still a symbol of prestige, of power and potency. Being passed by a faster car, for example, represents a loss of sexual grandeur. Traffic here is still acted out on the irrational level of male rivalry." A Viennese police department traffic expert shares the psychiatrist's pessimism. "No driving school, no policeman, can teach drivers a considerate and responsible attitude," he says, "when parents curse like fishwives and show their naked aggressions during every weekend outing."

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