Speed, the Sirens’ Song

When Chuck Yeager became the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound, when Roger Bannister became the first human to run a four-minute mile, they were guaranteed immortality. To the Olympic downhill skier, to the Indy race driver, to the Boston Marathon runner, to the Whitbread sailor, to the Reno air racer, to the Tour de France cyclist go the race and the glory--our awe and respect, the adoration of young boys, the affection of ladies and the applause of millions.

What gives with speed, anyway? Why do so many of us seek the adrenaline rush that comes with pushing beyond known limits or sensible norms?

Perhaps it is knowing that the far edge of life is the near edge of death and that being on that razor’s edge is waltzing with the devil, shivering from the stimulation of pure survival. As fledgling war correspondent Winston Churchill once noted, there is nothing quite as exhilarating as the crack of the shot that misses.

Speed and daring are also forms of thumbing our noses. By adventuring, by risking, we still whatever secret jelly quivers inside us.

It may also be that we are just soul-weary of a hundred levels of government dictating our health, welfare and safety. Which may well explain why an estimated 45million Americans regularly face the absurd challenges of skydiving, drag racing, bungee jumping, white-water rafting--anything that doesn’t involve popcorn and a Sony remote.

Accepting that pathology, it is no wonder that even the Evian-mannered lose reason and restraint once they get behind the wheel of a car.

We’re not talking of our amateur criminals who pound the pedal to the carpet in anger, recklessness and frustration, compounded by a chemically amplified sense of invincibility. That human weakness came with the first DUI, which came shortly after the 1903 introduction of the Ford Model A.

No, the peculiarity here is the gentle owner of a Honda Accord, the God-fearing grandfather and the law-abiding soccer mom, the novitiate and the political science major, the respected artisan and the sober professional, who see 120mph not as a number on a speedometer but as a target. Because it is there.

I have been entranced with speed since age 8, when I built a sand race car on the beach, stuck a bucket on my head and gear-shifted my sand shovel while yelping “grrerrrrerah ... vroom.”

It took me several years to actually find a way to speed, but since then I have driven a car at 201.6mph, flown a plane at Mach 2.2, piloted an offshore racing boat at 105.5mph and swum 100 meters in 56.9 seconds. Note those precise numbers and decimal points. The addiction reveals itself in the details.

Mostly, the thrill of speed on open waters or in empty skies or on skis down a lonely Alp may be easily dismissed as no more than the search for a kick in the pants. Yet there’s also the satisfaction of managing self and machine and melding instincts with learned skills.

Especially when it comes to automobiles. I remember the explanation of a living racing legend, Sir Stirling Moss, who decreed that any silly bloke can drive fast in a straight line. No talent in that. The absolute of racing, he said, was seeing a driver take a corner at nine-tenths that you proceed take at ten-tenths. Then, he concluded, you are a Rembrandt, who, having created a masterpiece, set down his brush and informed his peers: “There ... beat that.”

For the thoroughly experienced, driving a car at speed is a perfect amalgam of physics, adrenaline, pride and confidence.

It is a matter of reading a car, knowing its limits of balance and adhesion, sensing its weight shifting fore and aft to the forces of braking, turning and accelerating, knowing even when a car is feeling irritable.

And when it wants to play, there is a lightness of being, an equilibrium that you and it have created. There’s the drug.

But here’s the rub: This cannot be done just anywhere. The downside is obvious: Each year, as most people know by now, about the same number of Americans die in highway accidents as were killed by a decade of fighting in Vietnam.

With two vehicles approaching head-on at a closing speed of 150mph, no seat belt or air bag will prevent bones from becoming jam. Passengers get decapitated. Drivers get cut in half. Remember James Dean. Think of Princess Diana.

Sad but true: Ninety-eight percent of today’s drivers are incapable of handling a car at high speed, and there’s nothing more dangerous than ignorant daring.

Sure, there are ways to learn to speed with skill, but few of us take the time to go beyond our high school driver’s ed classes. Today’s motorists don’t know the capability of their automobiles and have even less understanding of their own abilities. And God really does not protect fools and drunks.

Still, it’s hard to shake the desire for speed. It is a social scourge, an aphrodisiac, a fatal poison. It is a siren singing to an impatient society forever obsessed with time and distance.