više manje zauvek

how much signal do i need to cut across eight lanes?

my highway driving test is at the end of the month. it was the last appointement i could find before my intermediary permit would expire. if you dont know how onatrio's permit system works, let me explain. we essentially have three levels of the standard vehicle licence: g1, g2 and g. g1 requires you to pass a written test, then youre allowed to drive with a fully licenced driver. g2 requires you to pass a road test, which allows you to do anything a normal driver could do except for a small few things. g requires you to pass a highway test, which somehow doesnt allow you all that much? its a weird system with a horrible test booking function and an overall process that spans over one and a half years. my test is for my full g licence, so today was my first time driving on a highway with my instructor.

maybe its cause i live in the city, but i personally hate driving. i grew up on teen movies where middle class nuclear households would gift their teenagers with new cars on their sixteenth birthdays. getting my licence and the keys to my moms car on my nineteenth birthday was supposed to feel liberating, like i was entering this new era of self sufficiency and overall adult life. its honestly not all that.

the few times ive driven in the more urban parts of toronto, i feel like my heartrate rises ten fold. theres so much information to process; how many cars are behind me? is someone is going to jump out in front of me and commit insurance fraud? is a cyclist is going to pass by and fuck up my car? when i get to my destination will i even be able to find parking? it all just sucks. outside of the city is worse, the ability to go faster that 50 kilometres an hour outside the city just adds to feeling of "i cant fuck up". what if someone gets mad and cuts me off and i cant break in time? boom catastrophe. it feels like im walking on glass every time i need to drive. i like being able to go places outside of the city relatively easily without planning a transit route, but the journey is a whole different story. keep in mind this is all on municipal roads im talking about, my practice drive on the highway only made these feelings a million times worse. i wanted to throw up after spending an hour driving alongside hundreds of other cars at a hundred kilometres an hour. its too much for me.

gas is horrible expensive too... i understand why my parents would complain about it when it got really high. insurance too... working in a insurance company with a large auto portfolio makes me realize how trash and predatory all these policies are. why cant i just buy a car and drive it, why do i need to be insured and pay hundreds a month to drive a car i dont use that often? most of my friends dont even have their licenses, let alone drive. i pretty much only got my license to be able to confirm my age when i want to drive, and to drive when i go back to serbia. otherwise, i wouldve stayed without one.

i value good public transit a lot, and i think that after driving for the past two years, ive realized how meaningless driving is when living in a city. the streetcar tracks near my building got fixed, so i only need to wait five minutes for the streetcar and i can take it all the way downtown. i loved this route as a kid, and now that i can ride it like i used to (but with newer and better streetcars) ive been really cherishing my early morning commute. the picture below is actually the same route i take, but theyve replaced the streetcar with newer fancier version. this is so nostalgic to me, bring them back please.



if i would drive, id have to drive alongside the thousands of people commuting downtown each day, it seems like such a stressful start to a persons day. i get if you live in a more rural area, then a car is a necessity, but metropolitan areas really should be able to go without private vehicles given the public transit works well.

toronto overall has become a lot more pedestrian friendly, but i think it still has a long way to go. most of the popular pedestrian streets have been reduced to single lane traffic, and the terminal streets in the core have turned more streetcar dominated and pretty hostile to drivers. the trains arent too bad either. despite all the failures and delays, public transit does its jobs okay. one day when i plan my inevitable entrance into politics, my only plan is forcing every road in the city to be single laned and for the public transit to run at shorter intervals. please vote for me.