The Driven Man

[Music] this film is about guilt guilt about the fact that I love the motorcar and I love every aspect of the motorcar I like buying them driving them owning them cleaning them I even do a bit of motor racing it's such a late clip but then there's the other me that loops about and feels guilty guilty about using a car at all when they say what a catastrophic effect that is having on our environment guilty about the fact that these great big lumps of metal are such lethal weapons if it's not killing the planet then it's killing us should I feel guilty I suppose I would just like to talk about a basic dichotomy that I have in my life related to the very great interest that I have in the motorcar perhaps I should start by asking you quite simply why you think I like the motorcar so much well actually your relationship to the car is probably extremely complicated and I think we should best explore this by asking you to go back and to think about your first association with cars come on I do remember on the sports fields at school and I was hopeless at all games at school when we were playing rugby for example I was always it at fullback well out of the way well out of the action and I aimed to keep it that way but I remember roaming around by myself at the back of the field miming gear changes and steering wheels and I used to propel myself great speed up and down the rugby field and round the white lines imagining myself not necessarily on some sort of race track but just in control of myself controlling my own destiny and maneuvering myself around I don't know if the other boys knew what I was doing I think they just thought I was a bit peculiar or to coin a phrase at the time a bit of a spaz but certainly the inspiration for at least a lot of my love of cars and machinery in general was the fact that I was brought up on a farm and farms are wonderful playgrounds and I remember being of myself and my two brothers the person who was always most keen to drive the tractor [Applause] [Music] what was great about driving the tractor was that it was my first taste of speed it just seems so fast and yet it wasn't the tractors top speed was 18 miles per hour but the fun that can be had at 18 miles per hour to me it felt like 150 but then after the tractor really was them fortuitously my mother's morris minor broke down after only doing 35,000 miles that the wheel went into the front wheel arch quite a common problem on some Morris minors and it was dumped on the farm that was a perfectly good car except for this one mechanical problem which no one could be bothered to get round to solve and I solved it I managed to find a part so this was it my very first car I couldn't believe my luck if a farm is the ultimate playground than this with the ultimate toy I had a whale of a time driving recklessly about the farm for a couple of years and then I decided to indulge in some customization I was convinced that the fewer body panels there were running the cooler Island [Music] [Applause] [Music] where there was hardly anything left I felt I was not really motoring so really what you were doing I suppose is you were disfiguring the other sort of parental vehicle and trying to transform it into something that was much more to your liking much more me yes I yes but how did you sort of move from that kind of driving experience to what most people take to be driving I mean passing the test getting onto the road well yes obviously by the time I was 17 I thought I was a pretty good driver because I had been Haring around a farm with what I thought was pretty immaculate car control for a few years by that point and I I think I probably was a reasonable driver technically but I wasn't a good enough driver to pass the Department of Transport test because I took my driving test three times failed at times SDY 75 1g I never failed for a technical reason the reason stated on the failure form was always the same not paying due care and attention to other road users I was sure I was technically competent but I suppose I just drove in a rather carefree style I just went about the business of getting from A to B [Music] perhaps after two years on the farm I treated other road users like wandering sheep that had escaped from the pen I think this idea they were feeling invincible that your skills are very sharply honed I mean is very typical and very typical from the research of young males if you ask men in particular but also women to a large extent do they think they're a good driver then something like 85 to 90 percent think that they are above average and to some extent I think people treat being called a bad driver there's almost in the same way as kind of slight on on their sexual ability people will admit that they're not very good at hanging wallpaper or carpentry but when it comes to driving most people feel very confident of those so your experience of your pretest is by no means unusual here I don't think so having acquired your driving license you must now felt that you were in total control you had acquired the mastery you were after as far as cars were concerned yes yes I mean mastery and I suppose the return of my self-esteem was it was best exemplified a couple of years later when I did take my heavy goods vehicle driving class why I suddenly yearned to drive a truck I'm not sure perhaps I was just remembering those days on the combine harvester a nice feeling of being in control of something big perhaps ships captains and heads of large industrial companies get the same vibes it's the challenge of the difficulty of the task that gives you the satisfaction whenever I'm asked what the most exciting moment of my life has been so far the one time outside the field of personal relationships when I can most clearly remember experiencing unadulterated joy was the moment immediately following my HTV class one driving test mr. Atkinson are pleased to say you've passed your test the experience of making 2,000 people laugh in a theater is but a light breeze compared to the tornado of excitement that I felt at that moment in 1981 clearly you weren't content to be in control of the average old vehicle that everybody else drives you wanted something much more grand and powerful no that that's all right yes absolutely but I think some of it is a sort of a yearning that I have I suppose in all areas of my life which which has always been to be different you know it's always trying to be the odd wanting if you like in a way to be the odd man out to be the one who's doing something that everyone else is not doing I mean I know that that that's what I liked at school even though I was hopeless at games which was obviously the thing that most boys admired other boys for the one thing I could do it seemed at the time was act in the school play at least I could do that so perhaps we start to get at what Rowan Atkinson's cars are really all about they're part of that whole alternative choosing alternative way yeah of actually achieving something which is very super personal and very real and very fulfilling well yes but the same time I feel within myself that I'm basically you know a pretty shy and retiring sort of bloke and I'm constantly surprised at the way that only in the world only in relation to cars that I can do these relatively arrogant things make these relatively arrogant brash gestures of buying really rather sharp looking motorcars that in theory you know there's a big bit of me which says this is madness you know this this is not you I mean there was this Mercedes 600 that I came across only about three or four years ago that was it was at the end of a particularly frantic period of buying and selling cars and it was this huge kripak long thing and it but what was wonderful about it is that you know Mercedes engineers had had installed this extraordinary air hydraulic system that did absolutely everything I mean not only did the seats move backwards and forwards and up and down by air you got this little sound and things moved back it when you press the button and the boot open and you press the button and boot closed itself now I was fascinated by that I suppose as an engineer but at the same time I got in it and I drove I bought it I bought the blasted thing I drove 50 yards and I felt such a trap what had I done surely the owner and driver of that road-going liner couldn't be me it was the turning point I realized my passion was out of control it probably means that you haven't quite yet found or hadn't quite found the car which actually has sort of tunes the kind of image that you want to project not only to other people as peaceful self-expression but actually to yourself I think whenever we look at a car we inescapably have a kind of thumbnail sketch of the kind of person who would ordinarily drive that kind of car and if we feel that kind of person then were attracted towards the car if we can't see ourselves as a member of that kind of group of persons then we will reject the car so perhaps your history of buying and selling is a way of sort of working towards an image that you want other people to have of you but more importantly that you want to have of yourself when you find the car that you're comfortable in to some extent you've found who you are so how do you find the car that fits your first port of call might be the murder show every car on the market under one roof served up with Brussels sprouts and all the tremendous [Applause] [Music] ladies and gentlemen Cleo and so yet another tin box is unveiled to the world's press you'd think that as virtually all of us own a remarkably similar looking tin box that we would have long ago stopped regarding such a thing as a significant event yet it is because they've spent 400 million pounds making it look subtly different and here every manufacturer is trying to convince you that their subtle differences are more subtle than anyone elses I first came here to the Motor Show 20 years ago my parents brought me down from the thumb loom as a half-term treat and like most people I did not come to see a Fiat or a Ford I came to see a Ferrari because I had never ever seen one these cars have an extremely strong image that is carefully cultivated and jealously guarded but do cars at the lower end of the market have an image or are they simply bought and sold like washing machines it's it's ferrous a image is vital to all buyers and motorcars I'm gone of the days when people bought motorcars to get from A to B they all do that they all do that safely and reliably the reason people buy cars of all sizes classes and prices nowadays is it says something about them it looks good on their dry even that's that's the whole part of buying America but it's it's not just the looks of course it's the most important part about it is the badge and if the badge is a good badge and you mentioned Rover which I obviously would believe is a good badge and there are one or two others around in the marketplace today people are prepared to pay extra money to have that badge right they put the the car keys down on the bar in the pub and it's got the logo of the manufacturer and they say I've got a whatever and that makes them feel good and they feel extremely proud about it [Music] worshipers come from throughout the land to pay homage to this Cathedral to conspicuous consumption to ogle and to gape and to give thanks for their continuing ability to conspicuously consume [Music] they're even angels standing by a heavenly host of them ready to flutter their wings and to flatter [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] the reality of carbyne for most of us is far removed from the glitz of a Motor Show 60% of us buy our cars secondhand John and Alan run a second-hand car dealership in South London and they are in no doubt what inspires them to do service well I mean it's basically if you know if you're doing it's a license to print money right we don't know too much about cars they're not that mechanically minded we do know if there's a profit in the car once you get to that stage yeah thanks thank a lot of people think that at least you know 30 percent of the car buying public like housewives or people who have no professed interesting cars and don't care what they drive everybody cares twice ago that lady came in to us on Saturday she was a student she was 21 she wanted to spend the rail about 2,000 pounds I know I had a G Richard Skoda three months old she said I don't care what I Drive she says also gets me from A to B I said arcosolia achiever educator for 2,000 hours oh no what I thought I don't know a Skoda don't really want to scare her anything else you've got to see can you tell can you get an angle on someone the moment they walk up your driveway there I would say so yeah by by and large we would be 90% correct excited in judging the milk from their look yeah we learn to threes use it as our watch town they come in and start going for every single car let me say well it's probably a waste of time that guy whereas another person comes in looks at say the Fox westrom five-door expect he looks at the escort five-door hatchback possibly sierra five-door hatchback there we know he's looking for a five-door watch I think he's something a bit of a comedy and some each Eames around I suppose how's the nikah dear people when they're wanting to buy a car how much about the car do they want to try out or do they want to experiment with well Jones particularly good salesman and selling a car without driving yeah I know it does it I don't know but a start very few cars you will refuse to start no I won't refuse to but I just don't see that there's any point because I'll explain to them that it would be rather silly of me to buy a car that wasn't in very very good condition in the first instance and they believed you what don't you well yes I have a particular problem with Porsches they are a tremendously good and interesting car and yet I can't bring myself to buy one simply because I don't wish to associate myself with the kind of people who do but I don't wish these people any ill I hope they all continue to have happy and successful lives but I just don't feel I have much in common with I therefore can't bring myself to buy the same kind of car I have similar problems with other vehicles because of the kind of person I feel myself becoming when I climb in the car must fit because as soon as you buy a car you are immediately identified with all the other people who have bought that kind of car [Music] although Aston Martin have a similarly strong image to port for some reason I feel happy with it and therefore with the car a lot of people looking at cars like Aston Martin's would see them as no more than sort of mere sort of kind of phallic extensions I think there's a lot of slightly charlatan amateur psychology which treats the long bonnet as the sort of the kind of penis and therefore the men who drive them are perhaps trying to sort of prove something about their own virility and so on I think we'd take the view that that is is rather too simple-minded what's absolutely especially wrong it also seems to have a sort of curvaceous suppleness sensuousness which you accept which you associate with female beauty so the fact that has both male and female characteristics is perhaps part of the sort of rather enigmatic attraction that it has and then along with it of course you've actually got the components of the internal combustion engine about which the American poet II Cummings wrote one of the most erotic poems I've ever read simply talking about reciprocating Pistons and hydraulics and and the fluid and clutches and disc brakes and things like that it's crazy to get so carried away with these kinds of things so here you are the sort of car rather a math for a digit kind of object for myself I'm well aware of this joy that can be derived from mechanical devices rolls-royce make the most obvious status symbol and they know more about driving ambiance than most people they are very aware of how important it is to make the things that you touch feel good merely the way that a knob to control an air vent moves the coolness of the chrome on your fingertips and the smooth lubricated nature its movement even in more popular cars these tactile qualities and the cozy feel of the cabin are a terribly important part of the driving experience if this is a very important aspect of cars the sense of enclosure it's almost really womb-like it really takes us back I suppose to that into uterine experience of security and warmth and coziness and that comes from this experience of being on one's own but the other aspect of it which is equally interesting is that because people feel in violet and secure they tend to handle their cars in ways which were totally out of proportion to their driving skills this is Roderick a mini cab driver in central London he drives in a most extraordinary fashion which can only reflect this invincibility that some people feel at the wheel of a car I just call my driving charismatic [Music] this car Roderick looks as though it's been through the wars a bit well I've met that's driving in London I mean you know there's some madman on the road so how many accident repairs are pending on this curve of about nine that the mayor most of them aren't my fault and she lets go in this land then carve them up and turn left yeah they don't worry Delk other drivers always get out of the way yes looking good she's under wave a lot do it oh yeah I always wave I mean whenever I carve anyone else I always think now they're going to indicate are they going to bed visual eye contact and their Denmark come on let's get around them do you encourage a visual eye contact oh no I never look at the other person I always and look at the car judge distances but not judge people got me Roderick you don't seem a very typical type of taxi driver in terms of your look and your and your sound oh well I I used to work at Lloyds and I had the distinction of being a suspended member of Lloyd basically at I have my own firm of brokers and I got ripped off by the people that were working for me you have condo tops with the police oh regularly maybe maybe what do you think is the key to at least the staying out of court grovel grovel like mad I love coffee all right I mean do you think you're good at it oh yes I left on enough women to it all becomes painfully clear I love being around roundabouts yes you know what what did you get with ya you never know what you're going to sort of come up against next it's a bit like accidents you never know when the next one's going to happen [Music] so you don't mind if I go around which I'm making you think he was reversing rounder around about I mean you know that let's London that is London for you I mean you know she do you do you stop up after accidents no never you never stop right well very around II anyway what's the point I mean it's only paperwork and I didn't like paperwork ever since has an insurance broker do you think the driving pills an essential hole in your life that could not be filled by anything else or by any other means oh yeah it's like being at the screen of a video machine playing Star Wars although few of us drive like Roderick most of us share his insensitivity to the dangers of the road if 30 people are killed in a train crash it is deemed a national disaster and yet that represents just 2 days of road accident deaths [Music] that's at 36 miles an hour this is a Minister of Transport he's on a visit to the transport and Road research laboratory where they have made a speciality of driving cars into concrete blocks in order to see what happens what happens apparently is that the car comes off worse than the block the analysis of this discovery kept them all in jobs here for many years until someone discovered that cars rarely collide head-on with concrete blocks so in today's experiment the car has hit a deformable structure more representative of another vehicle and it hasn't hit it head-on this looks like a slightly more oblique approach a slightly more tangential impact this one is that right that's right as you can see on the car only part of the car has really been involved in the impact and this side of the car there's very little damage done to it certainly not very much energy has been absorbed this is much more typical of what happens in an accident where only one side of the front of the car is involved and all the energy has to be absorbed by the structure here this brings all the fascia this very stiff area around the windscreen towards the occupant and as he moves forward in his seatbelt then he's much more likely to hit this and receive serious injuries or fatal injuries I think the car manufacturers have had their dilemma that they don't want to indicate when somebody comes to buy a new car that this might be the vehicle that they have an accident in so I think that they are anxious to try and play down safety in that way but if the public question safety when they go to buy a car then car manufacturers will respond and will give increased safety it's within their capability Paul Catalan is an extra policeman who having spent many years pulling mangled bodies from the wreckage of cars decided that lives could be saved and indeed a living could be made from teaching people to drive more safely so in terms of concentration how much then your reckoning do drivers concentrate I mean they don't know if I'm being generous yes absolutely if I'm being very generous I should imagine outs of an hour's journey they're probably concentrating for 15 minutes of it which works out about 25% we've all been on the familiar journey and we've turned up at work and you know you're at work you haven't got a clue how the hell you got there right yes yeah I thought it's probably Sunday and you realize you shouldn't even be at work you should be going to get a paper so 25% I think that represents probably out of four cars coming the other way three of them don't even know you're there doesn't matter whether they're doing the right things with the steering wheel and a why and why aren't they think about driving why aren't the girls ready the cars easy to drive and manufacturers have made it easier and easier and easier it's become a safer and safer environment for when we have the crash the seatbelts are here it's a quiet car it's a comfortable car it's an extension of your home right but you can't see them changing their children no because we the public of demand so do you think I'm concentrating specifically to me well I think what you're doing is what most people do and actually fall into the trap of you're still a pedestrian master you're driving right there's a pedestrian here look how far ahead he's looking he's probably just looking about two feet in front of it right no we're designed as pedestrians we were never designed to be car drivers if we imagine that when we run we look a little bit further ahead that's what you're doing as a car driver you're probably looking to a maximum I would say I'm probably the length of a cricket field in the width of it when we suffered from what we call tunnel vision which is why you're making fairly late movements for pilots on the left that we should have seen half an hour earlier should I actually do it do a commentary of what we should be seeing one thing we try and do is try and get eye contact with people as I said three out of four people don't really see it so I've got to do everything I can to try to get them to see us if I position my car nice and early it tells the cavalier coming through the other way that I really would like this section of road however I would be willing to give it up should it go wrong because it's not aggressive aggressive driving I'm trying to be a little bit more assertive though you have a difference between being positive and negative isn't it this person is trying to look for a parking space we've got a couple of members of exit trying to cross over the road here trying to commit suicide we've got a car almost waiting to turn right here if you ever sit like that by the way you're in a danger position the wheels are turned at an angle and if she got hit from the rear she get pushed into oncoming traffic again we warned over the roundabout side we're still thinking about this vehicle ahead of us the fact that it wants to turn now a lot of drivers would get very very close to this driver and treat them as something in the way they've got to get rid of that increases your stress level if you sit back there she's gonna turn right and go all the way back into the same property she hasn't found a parking space probably when she turns it's gonna be a he and I've actually not been very good at observation bring my speed down anyway what I'm trying to do actually is keep my height and heart rate and blood level actually level on on a par normally when we drive it's up and down up and down and we're heading for our first heart attack at the end of the day this is much more dangerous driving here and I think a lot more interesting then perhaps driving around us at ground racetrack yeah than on the road but having had an accident you're far more likely to be unheard you're sitting layers strapped in like a fighter pilot wearing a crash helmet fireproof overalls fireproof socks fireproof underwear in a car with a big roll cage welded into it to more than double or triple the strength of its structure all the traffic is going the same way like a big one-way street and above all everyone is concentrated very very hard indeed [Music] if you do have a spill there's always an ambulance in sight you couldn't come off a country road at night and have men dressed in orange running up to you with fire extinguishers in everyday driving your car is just as much a lethal weapon and yet everything conspires to distract you from wielding it safely yeah Peter hi yep modern cars are so stiff with home comforts we often forget that we're not [Music] yep well well it should be about 2:00 2:30 we put a ridiculous amount of trust in the one gesture that we are forced by law to make to safety the wearing of a seatbelt I think most people would agree that certainly in the first couple of years after the introduction of the law making it compulsory there was a fairly sharp increase in minor collisions consistent with people feeling so safe they weren't taking so much care because they've got the seatbelts on of course they weren't seriously injured this links very directly it was actually technically known as risk homeostasis that we all try and balance the sense of excitement that we have so the more safe you make people people feel they'll act in such a way to bring their sort of experience back up to a level that they feel comfortable with you mean they'll drive faster faster and Dean so if you put somebody in a very big solid car let's take a Volvo these kind of rather tank-like objects where you do feel very unbel then as a consequence of that you are likely to drive them faster you're likely to pay less attention to the roads than you did before until you're back to square one the same happens if we make roads straighter and faster because there's no sensation of risk coming from that experience we compensate by putting that back in certainly I know for myself that I get little sensation of risk traveling at 70 miles per hour on a motorway indeed my brain is dead surely this is a dangerous state of affairs you know when the speed limits were set many many years ago for motorways they were set at 70 yeah we had the same speed limits on motorways that we have on our dual carriageways where you have roundabouts traffic lights old ladies crossing the road so that really doesn't make sense to the average motorist and that's why we in the police service do advocate a higher speed limit cars are now built to go much faster than they were years ago the roads are not safer therefore we think that the speed limit can be hard do you think a lot of people perhaps secret to being chased to be involved in a pursuit yeah and there's some there's some evidence of that actually certainly and in the case of car thieves and people who take cars without the consent of the owner that they actually lurk about waiting to be picked up by a police officer and we had a very interesting case very recently in workshare where we had a BMW vehicle stolen and it was being tracked by my Jaguar cars on the motorway on the m6 that at one time at 120 miles an hour the driver put his fingers up through the through the roof to the cars that were following him and he actually telephoned his girlfriend in London to say that he was on his way but unfortunately he was being followed by a couple of police cars and direct he could shake them off he would love them but we had to take a decision so we decided on a very rarely used technique of boxing here Ian in the initial stages we used a member of the public as the front man in the box and he lost his bottle at the last moment and that the NW temporary got away but very quickly we had him boxed in with all police cars on this occasion and we were able through the use of skillful police drivers to stop the thief in his car without this chap certainly got his comeuppance then is now serving time at Her Majesty's pleasure but what brings about this change of character that makes ordinary men and women behave so irresponsibly at the wheel of a motor car cars are in a very real sense and extension of our bodies and we treat people who violate the space of our cars just as we would those who violate the space of our bodies and this territorial component is an important clue to why people behave in such an extreme fashion when they're driving so for example we don't like people coming up close behind us and leaning over our shoulder just as we don't like cars tailgating us and driving up close behind but cars are of course a great leveler they equalize in a sense that they allow people to pit themselves against each other not personally but through the medium of the car the traffic light scenario is a common one you have someone alongside you and both parties feel the proximity of the other feel a slight invasion of their spaces and a rather keen to get away the slightest movement in the car next you can bring a tiny involuntary movement of your own foot off the brake and if the other person reacts in a similar way then suddenly the fight is on [Applause] [Music] this is one of the most dangerous aspects of modern motoring mature adults behaving like children well not even like children like animals absurd territorial bickering like two otters fine - of each other up a tuft of grass [Music] perhaps it's because of the antiseptic nature of modern society where we don't have to defend our homes against marauding hordes that we turn to the motorcar to provide our thrills in danger of course when conflicts like this were commonplace in more primitive times retribution was Swift driving the car in a sense you become kings of the road you can escape you've got nobody telling you to slow down or do this or do that and I think that's part of the magic of that whole experience do you mean that there isn't much danger in in modern life and that you can experience the thrill a danger certainly driving a car is often one of the few opportunities that we have for risk-taking and again that's why it's exciting for this getting away from having somebody telling you what to do and that's why I think a lot of people I don't know whether it applies to you enjoy most being on their own in the car rather than having passengers certainly I feel that yes that is true yes I do prefer to be on on my own so this is what it's all about the freedom of the open road and above all the self determination when you drive down the end of your road on a Sunday morning you could turn left go down the shop and buy a paper or you could turn right and drive to Edinburgh for lunch you don't but the great feeling is that you could [Applause] and it is the removal of this freedom that frustrates us so much suddenly we are restricted suddenly we can't go where we want when we want all we can do is follow like sheep and hence the overpowering desire to get away to get out even if you don't know a shortcut at least you're moving an element of self-determination is returned to us we may not know where we're going but at least we're going somewhere [Music] [Music] so often the shortcut is a long cut and we are not even any further forward but usually we don't care we've used petrol tire ourselves out but in a way it was worth it we escaped and although we were recaptured it's always good to taste freedom millions of us subject ourselves to this maddening crawl every day rather than travel by public transport why I think because the car is this kind of personal turf we have at least the illusion of having total mastery and control over own kind of destiny we can actually choose to stop we can behave in ways in a car that we wouldn't dream of doing or most of us wouldn't dream of doing on buses you know picking our noses for farting scratching having sex eating all those kinds of things which most people by and large don't do on trains we're not gonna get people out of their cars simply because we have efficient buses or efficient trains for all of the kind of deep ingrained psychological reasons that are associated with the experience of driving maybe if we had good public transport and we had Stalin in power we could actually stop people driving but I think it's gonna take such draconian steps to sort of get rid of this love affair with a car that there is not the political strength or political will for any government to achieve that any government which starts to sort of interfere with us apparently god-given right to drive on the roads at any time and anywhere you want anybody puts that in their manifesto is going to be in political oblivion for a very long while I think it seems to me there are two ways of affecting the behavior or the abilities of the motorists one is to regulate and to make it more difficult to have cars depending on their size or more expensive or to introduce tests like the emissions test and the other is the price mechanism and those matters they're off the chancellor there's no doubt that the motorcar is a political hot potato the government are reluctant to do anything that might affect our freedom or our standard of living and the motor manufacturers only do what the customer demands but really I need the government to legislate because what am I going to demand when I'm enjoying something so much most people's idea of the car isn't one person driving in it to freedom over a Scottish more this is the reality of the motor trade 35 million new cars are made every year it's a hundred thousand cars a day or one car every second you sneeze and five new cars come into the world you go to bed at night you wake up and there an extra thirty thousand cars on the road the motor trades is huge enormous growing organization it's got nothing to do with the way that it's marketed and there are serious environmental consequences as a result there has always been personal transport today it is the motorcar it could be the personal rocket ship in in in 20 30 40 years time who knows but but whilst the freedom of mobility is required by the consumer and it has to be that's why he's buying all these cars around the world then I believe that the the motorcar in whatever guys will continue so I'm extremely optimistic about the future and motorcar and let me give you one interesting example it's what happening happening in Eastern Europe at the moment were they they have been given liberty freedom for the first time in many years as we perceive it in the west side and I don't know if they perceive it quite the same way and the very first thing they've done is go out and buy thousands of motor cars but one man's meat of course is another man's poison these manufacturers are currently buying up Eastern Europe they're already building factories in Bulgaria Yugoslavia and Hungary and after that they'll be looking at the third world they're already moving into Latin America and most of the car market huge-o it is is currently devoted to North America Europe and Japan and when that rate of growth expands to the rest of the world then the impacts on the greenhouse effect for example will be huge so do you think that the car will simply enough to cease to exist yes I think that's about right in the the end of the road is knife or the motorcar we don't realize it a moment so as I completely lunatic thing to say but I think that this decade will be the turning point in the success of the motorcar I mean if it doesn't happen then we're all going to go down the toilets because there is no way that we can maintain this level of growth in air pollution from motor vehicles yet again the problem is one of perception where is this hole in the ozone layer and assuming that someone with sharper eyes than me is spotted it what an earth can we do about it imagine a vehicle that can drive you five miles for a penny a vehicle that needs no petrol just a battery and that takes the press of a button to start the squeeze of a lever to stop [Music] the Sinclair c5 399 pounds what to buy one want to see one or simply want to read the bottom line is people don't like the idea of driving an electrical car and the reason for this is that electricity is associated with domestic appliances and with the kitchen so whenever people are offered the prospect as they were in the case of Clive Sinclair's c5 of having electrically powered vehicle their minds unconsciously go back to the whole idea of Hoover's saying machines refrigerators all these kinds of things which are associated with menial work and not with the kind of liberation of the car should bring and it is a very real liberation that in the end overrides my guilt I have nightmares about the petrol running out about empty roads and a lack of independence and yet secretly I'm optimistic optimistic that they'll always be personal transport and the dip will always be possible to make it exciting [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Archive Oddball

Views: 210,042

Keywords: rowan atkinson, cars, comedy, documentary, 1991

Id: _WvJmQlI55g

Length: 48min 54sec (2934 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 15 2019