I don't drive much. Not much at all. Maybe 20 miles per week. I work at home. The kid's school is within a mile. Church is roughly 2 miles away while Wal-Mart is within 5. When I do drive, I tend to notice things I never did when I used to commute to work.

Each vehicle is an individual. Each car has its own occupants, purpose, route and destination. Different colors and states of cleanliness abound. Some drivers are singing to music that you cannot hear. Some are emitting violent low frequency vibrations which you, unfortunately, can hear. And feel.

Each vehicle is an individual, but on the roads, the collective whole behaves as one. All cars stop together at a red light. They (generally) maintain the same pace on the roads. They flow together, moving from intersection to intersection, light to light. Some drivers do turn off and leave the pack, but they are not missed; their places are quickly filled by others.

Traveling down the road to a specific destination is usually successful because there are rules which are being followed. Is any driver required to follow them? Not really. It is not possible for the minimal level of enforcement available to enforce that all drivers follow the rules. For the most part, following the rules of the road is completely voluntary. Most drivers comply with the traffic laws and they believe that other drivers will also. The roads are safe because of this trust.

No one trusts all drivers, but to get behind the wheel and put the car into gear requires a level of trust. It requires trust that the oncoming traffic will stay in their own lane. It requires trust that the green light means it is safe to cross the intersection because the other drivers are respecting their red light.

The whole concept makes me think of Romans 13, where Paul boils the second half of the Ten Commandments into a single rule:

I drive in a safe manner because I want to be safe, but also because I do not wish to damage my "neighbors" - those cars driving near me. Causing damage to them is costly to me in terms of monetary damages as well as guilt. It also damages my own vehicle and possibly my own person. I also have to trust (to a degree) that they too are driving in a safe manner. Everyone keeps their eyes open for (and their distance from) those drivers who refuse to follow the rules of the road.

If traffic is stopped and someone wants to change lanes, it doesn't hurt me to let them change in front of me. If I'm at a stop sign and no one knows who's turn it is to go, it doesn't hurt me to wave and let the other driver go first. In fact, it helps both me and them - because it keeps both of us safe. If some knucklehead cuts me off, it doesn't help the situation to make certain rude gestures or tailgate them for the next 2 miles. It increases my risk of accident and possibly much worse.

There will always be selfish drivers, those with no mind for anyone beside themselves. As long as they remain a small minority, the roads remain safe. As their numbers increase, there is some threshold where the traffic system breaks down into anarchy. The same applies to civilization itself. If the number of law abiding citizens are outnumbered by those who pay it no heed, the civilization will collapse.

Driving a car provides an incredible degree of freedom, as long as the basic structure (rules) are followed. Trust and Love are the ingredients that make our roads functional. Without those, anarchy would reign and driving to work would be like a scene from The Road Warrior.