A ways back, it certainly did have value. Europe lost its roaming gangs of bandits ages back, but America still had them until more recently. Maybe this is why Europeans are less likely to be wedded to the idea of guns for "self-defence" - it's been longer since we needed them, so it's been kind of "bred out" of the society.

Anyway, until recently you needed to defend yourself against violence from outside. Humans have always formed groups, and when your group has resources and another group doesn't, your group must be able to defend those resources. Sharing would be nice, but generally the result of that would be that both groups starve, so selfishness is reinforced. And even within the group, the high-status people get more than the rest, so there's internal competition as well. But there also needs to be co-operation within the group, so a child's upbringing has to balance making them eager to prove themselves whilst not screwing everyone else up. It's difficult to say how much of this is genes (physically inherited) and how much is memes (taught consciously or unconsciously by those around us).

I think this is where the car thing comes in. I think we're starting to regard "those in the car" as "our group", and "those outside the car" as "the opposition". If you feel a connection with other road users then you're less likely to have this concept - truckers rarely cut up other truckers, for instance, because they have the concept of them being "one group" and so will co-operate. Car drivers though have little connection with other road users, and the increased isolation inside larger, more enclosed, more self-sufficient cars will not improve this.

Interestingly, in Mediterranean countries like France and Greece, drivers tend to be more nuts than any Brit/American. However, I believe this is more in the nature of "jockeying for position amongst our group" rather than "fighting an opposing group". So although they'll all try to beat each other to the lights, it's not in the same league as some Americans/Brits, where a bad drive to work spoils their whole day or where they haul off and beat someone over the head. Maybe I'm generalising here - dunno.

Graham.