year should be enough to teach even a young man that it is unwise to trust to providence on the roads, it is safer to learn to drive properly. But the fact remains that the risks some people take on the roads are beyond belief; every time they overtake they flirt with death, much to the annoyance of traffic coming the other way.
Then as one begins to lose one's nerve, in other words when one realises that something can happen, one begins to drive more slowly. One does not necessarily drive any better, but one does drive more slowly. Now the person who drives as though nothing can happen to him, cannot really believe he is immortal. He may think he is, but he cannot really believe it , because he has no experience to help form that belief. You cannot just pick up beliefs, without any basis to confirm that they are true. If beliefs (held either confidently or without confidence) are a function of one's whole being, then you cannot believe you are immortal, unless your daily experience teaches that it is true. It doesn't; it teaches exactly the opposite.
If a person really knew he was immortal, he would believe it with a confident belief. He would know of course that he could die if he was involved in a road accident; but he would also know that if he avoided accidents of that kind he would not age as the years passed. My guess is that he would drive slowly - having in our colloquial idiom, “all the time in the world“. He would seldom, if ever, be in a hurry. He would drive at the same speed as the man who had lost his nerve; but almost certainly, unlike the man who had lost his nerve, he would take the trouble to drive well.
And so we are faced with this startling conclusion, that the fear of death, which is only a completely uncertain belief in one's own immortality, affects a man's driving of a motor car. It tends to make him drive like a maniac. It influences his decision to overtake another vehicle, his decision when to change…