Car, Bus, Tram or Unicorn: Why My Car is a Psychologically Informed Environment

What I’ve been thinking..

I love sitting in traffic.

No really.

I am genuinely at my happiest in the car, like the great modern day philosopher Miley Cyrus said: “it’s the climb”, or more accurately in this case, “it’s the drive.”

I reckon I’m not the only one who finds being in the car comforting. My go to playlist is entitled ‘Springsteeny 1980s(ish) songs with cars’, there’s a reason that people are always writing comforting songs about cruising along the highway in the car; it’s the same reason that seemingly lovely nans with perms who would give you some homemade jam if you met them in a knitting circle will happily flip you the bird and rev their engine when they’re behind the wheel of their fiat punto. One of the best feelings I can remember is falling asleep in the back of a car with my parents talking in the front, feeling a million miles from home and waking up in my own bed. It’s because cars make us feel removed from the goings on outside of our little mobile metal bubble.

The service I work for supports adults with multiple and complex needs, they are experiencing homelessness, mental ill health, offending behaviour and substance misuse issues. Their lives are chaotic and disorganised; and despite this they are expected to attend more appointments in a week than most people have in a year. Yet over the last couple of weeks I’ve heard myself debating the merits of giving our service users lifts to and from appointments. I’ve heard myself saying clichéd things like: “We’ll risk creating a dependence” and “He needs to show some commitment and get himself there”


So here’s a list of reasons why I was wrong:

The pressure is off when your customer gets into your car. At least the pressure is off for them. They have got themselves away from the distractions and the chaos they've probably had to dodge to get to your meeting point and until they arrive at the drug service/court/housing office the rest is really up to you, the support worker; and it just might be the only part of their contact with services where no one's expecting anything from them. I’m starting to think that the promise of a lift is more to a customer than an alternative to the bus. The lift is a bridge, a middle ground between their hectic, chaotic life and the structure and conformity of their appointment. It’s someone reminding them, encouraging them and giving them the excuse to exit the chaos stage left for a scene or two and jump in the car.

Eye contact, it’s important, the eyes are the windows to the soul and all that. But I don’t think we all need to be staring each other dead in the eye all the time to show how interested we are; sometimes it’s nice to talk to someone without the pressure of their eyes on you. I think there’s something to be said for the power of conversations that are had while your client knows you are listening to them but watching the road. Noone’s taking notes and maybe it will give people the confidence to discuss things they might not want to discuss sat across a table in an interview room.

If your customer will only attend an appointment when they get a lift with you in the car, then maybe this is a dependency of sorts, but if something as simple as a lift has changed someone’s behaviour and engagement from never attending to attending consistently with support then isn’t this just the kind of change we hope to empower people to achieve. Our customers are very resourceful, capable people. Most are capable of an independent bus journey, but I don’t think we need them to prove it. If six months ago the customers never went to the GP and now they will access essential medical treatment who’s really bothered whether they got there by car, bus, tram or unicorn?

After a long period of attempting to engage with a young rough sleeper who had, after several months refused any help with accommodation a colleague passed him in her car. He was cold, wet and tired. She asked if he needed any help, and for the first time he accepted an offer of accommodation. She drove him straight to a local hostel and he has been accommodated ever since. The lift certainly didn’t solve all of his problems, but it offered an instant, tangible contrast to rough sleeping. It was warm, dry and contained a friendly face.

Another customer in our service has recently passed his driving test; seeing the commitment and perseverance he showed and the independence and confidence that passing his test afforded him I’ve realised. If our customer is dependent on us for lifts to appointments, it’s only for as long as they are dependent on the appointment. Eventually their lives will move on and they will no longer require our lifts or our support and that takes as long as it takes.

Maybe my car is naturally a bit of a psychologically informed environment. Perhaps not in the traditional sense, but it is an environment that guarantees no interruptions, natural light and a seating arrangement that doesn't feel like an job interview or an interrogation. That’s why when someone asks me what I’m doing, my answer will never be “giving Dave a lift to the needle exchange” my answer will go something like this “I’m supporting Dave to change his life.”

In a climate where services are having to do more for less; there is more expectation for the customer to travel to the service rather than the other way around. So I shall count myself lucky to work for a service where we still have the resources to go to the customer and the next time someone asks for a lift, rather than worrying about dependency or questioning their commitment I will say “yes”, hope they pick a good playlist or sit quietly, watch the road and listen to what they have to say.