1. You shall not kill.
2. The road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm.
3. Courtesy, uprightness and prudence will help you deal with unforeseen events.
4. Be charitable and help your neighbor in need, especially victims of accidents.
5. Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin.
6. Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so.
7. Support the families of accident victims.
8. Bring guilty motorists and their victims together, at the appropriate time, so that they can undergo the liberating experience of forgiveness.
9. On the road, protect the more vulnerable party.
10. Feel responsible toward others.
The only carry over from the original 10 Commandments is "You shall not kill." I presume this means that as long as you're driving, adultery is okay! And coveting. Delicious, delicious coveting.
Number two is a bit odd. "A means of communion between people"? I'm sure the guy hauling ten tons of chicken feed for eighteen hours straight is thrilled to hear this.
Number three seems more like a helpful hint than a Commandment. Six is overly wordy. Number eight seems impractical, cruel and potentially dangerous.
Still, I give the Vatican credit for trying to be helpful. I'd rather them spend their time producing inane driving tips than convincing Africans not to use condoms.
4 comments:
I'm not really sure I see your point in the headline. Basically, the 10 Commandments say don't steal, lie, murder, cheat on your wife, dishonor your parents. Those seem pretty good moral principles regardless of their provenance. The other stuff might be irrelevant but, like the Bible itself to a large extent, the 10 Commandments represent a (generally) universal consensus on what constitutes moral behavior. The fact that they are usually portrayed in a religious context doesn't take away from their moral validity. Obviously, given the religious context, they should not be posted in courthouses but if you simply wrote out "Good Things to Do as Human Beings" they would be pretty good starters it seems to me.
Of the original Ten Commandments (using the traditional protestant list rather than the numerous other lists, including two different ones in the Bible) at least five of them are bogus. Four are strictly related to religious duty and one is about coveting, hardly a moral imperative.
Of the driving Commandments, I think at least five of them are generally applicable to living a good life if you take out the specific stuff about driving: 1, 3, 7, 9 and 10.
I guess this makes it a tie. Feel responsible towards others, however, tilts the balance towards the new list, I think. :-)
Just a quibble but I thought coveting meant not to covet your neighbor's wife, which seems to make a lot of sense. I will, however, bow to your greater knowledge of the Ten Commandments.
Good point. (You said ass!) It's more like lusting in your heart. Based on what I'm reading, I think a prohibition of genocide is the last thing that God would have commanded.
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