CONTRAFLOW with Bobby McWheeler

Feng Shui may work for a SmallCar®. But what about push-bikes and SUVs?

You know you can always tell when the media are short of things to talk about. Just as the roads are filled with long lines of cloned cars every morning you’ll find the airwaves reporting non-news with a motoring connection. ‘Why is this?’ you may ask. Well... the media reckon that everyone is either a car driver, wants to be a car driver or was a car driver - till they got caught. My view is that by driving a SmallCar® I’m in a different category, freeing up road space for more enlightened road users. (Editor’s note - I’ve heard all this before... now get on with the article before I delete the page!).

So ‘Feng Shui for cars and push-bikes’. Is it possible or pointless? The media agree with me that cars are basically homes on wheels that alternately park and drive on the way to work every morning. Currently urban speeds are around 10 mph so something is needed to improve the flow. Can Feng Shui improve the situation? Well of course it would help if we re-arranged cities so all vehicles pointed in the same direction - that way ‘conflict’ could be avoided. Feng Shui suggests that pointing your car, or push-bike way from your house is a good move.

This however assumes that you have not been boxed in by another Feng Shui follower with a large SUV. Which brings me back to the pointlessness of the idea. If more people drove a SmallCar® then we’d all get along a lot better. Look to China and you can still see masses of people commuting without getting in each others way. The fact they do this by push-bike is maybe a bit backward in my petrol tinted view but it doesn’t take much to see this working with thousands of smaller vehicles and mopeds.