Was driving really more strenuous in the past?
We put a lot of stock in the progress that has made driving effortless and almost automatic. But does this really make driving less strenuous than it used to be?
Of course, today we use much less force, our muscles don't have to tense up as much, because a modern car brakes with power assistance, steers easily and perhaps even changes gear/clutches automatically.
Of course, that was different in the past. You had to turn the steering wheel hard, push down on the clutch pedal with 30 or even 70 kg of pressure, move the gearshift against the resistance of the linkage or gearbox, and so on and so forth ...
But this is only one side of the coin. More power was required, but not necessarily more attention. The volume of traffic was significantly lower. If you came to a junction, you could often just drive through. Crossing a village was possible in top gear, whereas nowadays you are constantly stopping, starting, decelerating and accelerating to stay in the flow of traffic.
Today, concentration is focused on the environment, whereas in the past, driving took up a lot of attention. Whether this is really less stressful in the modern world is open to question. In any case, many older people no longer want to undergo the stress of driving through a big city - it is too strenuous for them.
With the Beetle 50 years ago, it was much less nerve-wracking, even if you had to change gear a few times. You didn't have one foot in prison just because you had overlooked a 30 km/h sign somewhere, because the density of traffic signs was also much lower and there were simply speed limits or basic speeds, the rest was left to the driver's common sense. Exactly! Less stressful!
