Cars are objects. Streets are places. But in my Kansas hometown, drivers forget these simple facts.

Our opinion editor contemplates the pestiferous inconvenience of inconsiderate drivers blocking traffic throughout his hometown. (Getty Images)

Cars are objects.

That means they exist in the same physical space as people and dogs and cats and duck-billed platypuses. That means they exist alongside other cars and trucks and mopeds and penny-farthing bicycles.

So why doesn’t anyone act like it?

In recent weeks, driving through my hometown of Lawrence, I have witnessed repeated violations of this basic precept.

Drivers appear ignorant of the concept of physical space. If you stop your car in the middle of the street, other cars cannot pass if there is no space to do so. If you have decided — just as an example — to stop your pickup at a downtown intersection so you may enjoy a leisurely conversation with someone at the driver’s side window, that means that you have stopped traffic.

Cars similarly idle on the city’s main drag for minutes at a time while partygoers disembark or stuff themselves into vehicle interiors like so many drunken harlequins. They block entrances and exits of parking lots, apparently oblivious to the fact that other vehicles also require parking spots.

Please understand, my fellow Lawrence residents: Your car is real! So is your truck!

All of the other vehicles around it are real, too. Regardless of how many hallucinogenic substances you may have ingested, I guarantee you that those cars actually exist.

Rest assured, I’m not talking about sensible and explicable automotive delays. We’ve all had to wait a few moments for cars to pull in and out of spaces, to check for pedestrians, to ensure the overall safety of public motorways.

Likewise, car breakdowns and other emergencies happen. As someone whose car once broke down while leaving the 23rd Street Wendy’s, I sympathize with my whole soul.

But in the world that I grew up in, if you experienced such a situation, your entire body would throb with shame as you tried signaling to other drivers that something unexpected had happened, that you were very sorry, and that you were working to allow them to pass as soon as possible.

What I’m talking about here is someone deciding in the middle of a full-on residential street to stop their car in the middle of the road and have a full-blown conversation with another person. Not a couple of words, mind you, not a “hello” or a friendly wave.

I’m describing a minutes-long conversation in which each person uses multiple hand gestures while expostulating at length.

Don’t get me started on the delivery trucks serving a major online retailer, either. While this retailer’s founder relishes ripping apart the storied journalistic legacy of the Washington Post, its employees make a regular practice of stopping their delivery vehicles in the middle of the road. Could they use the driveway? Sure. Could they pull over into a parking space? Sure.

But the corporate incentives driving the mass adoption of AI-generated slop are also forcing these drivers to turn their vehicles into insurmountable obstacles across the nation’s streets.

I am a relic. I am a fossil. I am an impossibly old person who remembers that at one point, roads were used to actually move from one location to another. You would enter the car — a motorized conveyance running on some sort of fuel — and steer it to another place while using the road.

I am old enough to sincerely believe that we all collaborate in a global project of a civilization. That means looking out for one another, protecting our shared spaces and upholding social norms. (This also means realizing that Ayn Rand’s books are terrible.)

This means understanding that there is a reason why Christianity has lasted two millennia, and it has more to do with Jesus teaching “love your neighbor as yourself as you would yourself” than with verses about killing your enemy’s children.

It’s not fun to put others ahead of yourself.

It’s not enjoyable to think about what others need in their day-to-day lives.

But guess what: That’s the world in which we live. There’s no other one to go to right now.

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.