I developed epilepsy, in my 50s, and so can't drive any more because, behind the wheel of a car, I would represent a terrible danger to other road users (as well as to myself!). Fortunately, I live in a major UK city with an excellent public transport system. Even so, my last few years at work were a bit of a struggle at times. Now I'm retired, though, public transport is free*. Nevertheless, in many rural districts public transport has been phased out and many carless elderly people have to rely on relatives, friends and neighbours for essentials like shopping.

I stood on a bridge over one of our local motorways, the other day, and watched hundreds of motor vehicles passing below me. It occurred to me that I was watching institutionalised madness. All of those vehicles poisoning the air and the soil with their emissions and most of them probably going nowhere particularly important. Added to that, so many of our historic towns and cities and vast swathes of our countryside have been wrecked and subordinated to this obsession with cars. But this insanity has become so mundane and ordinary now that the vast majority of people never question it. I suppose that this how our species will slide to extinction, over the next few generations, in a sort of unquestioning fog of mundane madness.

* The age of eligibility for free public transport has been raised recently and it wouldn't surprise me to see it phased out altogether.