The cost of annoyance

"Take care, there's a 30 zone here," my father reminded me. We were driving through a generic German suburban street, wide and well maintained. There were nice and wide sidewalks on both sides of the road, bordered by a red stripe of a bike lane. Slowing down to 30 km/h made me feel strange, expecting some imminent danger warranting that type of speed to jump in front of me.

Instead, it was just dull annoyance. There was no danger, no school pedestrian crossing, no damaged road to put our car in distress. I gloomed through the windshield at the speed trap ahead and kept my eyes on the dashboard. It made me instantly rethink my endearment to the modernization of city traffic at home.

I've been sold on a modern urban space with multiple choices of transit more than once in my life at that point. While visiting a place that should embody the notion, all I saw was a glacial speed limit along the main road (and a bus stop that I never saw a bus stop at). It's not just inefficient and disconnected from its original purpose, it's annoying.

I assume most people prefer policies based on the annoyance cause by them. Almost no-one hates a more frequent bus schedule, nor a cheaper ticket, but most absolutely despise driving at a snail's pace. The annoyance of the latter will definitely force some to prefer the bus and the bicycle with time, but the former will make a man prefer them happily.

I am of the opinion that we need to make amends with our own annoyance and try to resolve it instead of ignoring them. After all, the persistence of even the smallest pebble in the shoes or the quietest dripping of water can make us go insane.