Here in [Your] Car

I have been taking the opportunity to cycle around at all hours of the day. My most consistent ride into town is following the Yarra Trail from Studley park which reduces the number of traffic lights I have to stop for to 3.
My favorite is riding from Melbourne city at night. It really does look much better lit up. I know earth-hour or whatever made a point of what a tremendous waste of energy this is, particularly when our electricity comes from dirty dirty coal.
But what I also notice is, of all the cars on the road 99% of them at any given time of day have a soul occupant.
What a waste of space, my bike does a good job of transporting me and it weighs less than me. Of course my bike is not so practical if I want to do a weekly grocery shop. Fortunately I used to just live betwixt two supermarkets and could do this on foot for one person with a set of green bags.
But it isn't a very efficient system is it, for the rare occassions your car actually needs to seat 5 people, you have to lug around 5 seats the rest of the time. And then for the few occasions you actually need to transport more than a briefcase or backpack worth of stuff, you need two extra wheels to provide that base that prevents luggage from tipping a bicycle over on its side.
But overall as it stands a car is not a very flexible package, and it could be worthy of redesign.
But the inefficiencies of cars have clearly never been much of an issue, hence SUV sales shot up early this decade despite their literally being no rational reason for them to do so. And what I mean by that was that it was quite well known that they handle like a donkey, are ugly, heavy, dangerous and have real fuel consumption problems.
They existed before that because they were a highly specialized piece of equipment, like a fine Swiss Army knife that when stuck in the bush can come in real handy. But what we have been witness to in our lifetimes is the equivalent of watching people slice up bangers and mash with a swiss army knife, rather than using said knife to amputate their hand when it is stuck between two boulders and nobody is around.
But not just that, I was confused by a suggestion from colleagues that when they are stressed out or upset they like to get in their car and drive around, drive around aimlessly.
I don't drive much but when I do, it stresses me out. This is probably because my inexperience makes me acutely conscious of the lethal momentum I have at my command, and that is in my parents Volkswagen golf (the European indicator reversal doesn't help none either).
So clearly the general design, use and attachment to cars goes beyond rational and is quite emotional.
Speaking of emotion how does this make you feel:

Because don't worry the driver was completely unharmed.
You know when people get annoyed at cyclists getting holier than thou, getting all whiney, and just generally sick of taking shit from people who ride bikes all the time. Guess what cyclists get sick of? People attempting to kill them all the time.
Nobodies trying to kill them, you say. But if getting into a leathel weapon and taking it out into space occupied by vulnerable people isn't trying to kill them, what is? I mean yes its a by-product, the closest I come to being killed by a driver on regular occassions is someone trying to save 3 minutes by running a light, or racing the yellow to turn left in an intersection, right through the path I am riding. So I can calculate just how valuable my life is to these people, however much they earn in three minutes (presuming they are even on the clock).