The car as a safe bubble
Psychology can move mountains; the car in March 2020 as a retreat? Limited.
The automobile can truly look back on a success story. It changed the world, and people and the way they live with it. But the car also knows only too well how quickly history can change.
From the celebrated means of transport of the heart to an air polluter, a dirt-polluter: suddenly, driving a car was fatal and sickening.
But society's consciousness is changing again these days. Mankind is facing an unprecedented crisis, comparable to a global conflict such as World War II: and at this moment, this does not mean the fight against air pollution.
And exactly in these days the car offers a safe haven, not only psychologically, but also a kind of paradisiacal cage against the Corona virus, which is haunting all of us in these spring days. Of course, the car also protects physically, as it always has.
For some people, the private car stands for much more than independent mobility, but it transports a feeling of security. No coughing people on buses and trains, but hermetically sealed space. Not within your own four walls in your home office, but with the glass capsule safe and sound through "out there", the old pioneers would have been delighted.
The threatening curfew, which will inevitably affect Germany in the next few days, and Corona will change that - like everything else around us.