The Philosophy of Driving
by Brent Antonson
Most people think driving is about getting somewhere. It isn’t. It’s about staying in control while pretending you’re free.
Driving is the one place modern humans still feel like they have agency. You’re alone, sealed in steel, hurtling through space at 100 kilometers an hour, deciding your own fate with half-inch movements of a right foot. Philosophers used to debate free will in Greek amphitheaters; now we test it merging onto the Trans-Canada.
The act itself is a paradox: control through surrender. The more you relax into the curve, the better you handle it. Push too hard and physics reminds you who’s really in charge. The road is a teacher—merciless, fair, and silent.
The Existential Lane
Camus would’ve been a good driver—he believed life was absurd but insisted on style. Every commute is his Sisyphus: climb the hill, coast down, repeat tomorrow. We don’t push boulders anymore, we push pedals. Meaning is found in the motion, not the destination.
Kierkegaard might call the clutch a leap of faith: release it too slow, you stall; too fast, you lurch. Either way, it’s belief meeting mechanics. Nietzsche? He’d drive manual, obviously. The man worshipped control disguised as chaos.
Machines and Minds
Your car is a mirror. Some people treat it like armor, others like a confessional. The road becomes a Rorschach test—you see yourself in every idiot who cuts you off. Rage isn’t about them; it’s about the illusion of order breaking down.
Driving exposes what’s left of human patience. You can tell a civilization’s mental health by its traffic patterns. We build wider lanes and faster cars, yet we’re angrier than ever. Why? Because speed amplifies ego. Every red light is a lesson in humility.
The Drift Between Control and Freedom
Manual transmissions are going extinct, and with them a philosophy: that skill matters. Automatic cars removed consequence, electric cars removed sound, and self-driving cars threaten to remove the self.
When the machine thinks for you, you stop thinking through it. The road ceases to be a meditation and becomes a simulation. The feedback loop between man and machine—the tiny correction of steering, the tactile hum of friction—is the essence of awareness. Remove that, and you remove the driver from driving.
The Moral of Motion
The road has always been a metaphor for life, but not because it leads somewhere. It’s because it never stops. You don’t drive to reach; you drive to remain moving.
Every trip ends in a parking lot, and every life ends in a kind of off-ramp. The point is not arrival, it’s alignment—the quiet stretch between acceleration and release, when the hum of the engine syncs with your pulse and the world, for a second, feels coherent.
That’s the philosophy of driving:
We steer not to escape chaos, but to balance inside it.