Risk

Car insurance is necessary because we can’t be trusted to carry the weight of our own risk. We pay for the luxury of worrying less about what happens when we inevitably make a mistake. And while we still hope that mistake is a minor one, we know that the unbelievable gall of hurtling from one place to another in a metal chassis weighing multiple tons, in the company of countless other people controlling similar devices, is one of the greatest risks we will take in our lives. We accept the risk because of the convenience it brings with it, but when all this risk comes crashing into us, when the highway darkens and we feel our heartbeats accelerating as something inevitable and nightmarish begins to tear itself into the world before our eyes, we see ourselves for the horizontal Icaruses we really are, and we understand why this risk is not a tonnage we can carry on our own.