Walk across any motorway bridge (see Figure 4.1) in the UK or elsewhere – as most of us have done at some point in our lives – pausing briefly to wonder at the colourful pulse of cars and wagons that rumble beneath you, and it soon becomes clear that neither the type of road nor the speed at which individual vehicles travel along it tells us what sort of journeys or driving-events the travellers in those vehicles are engaged in. For while motorways and their variants – freeways, autobahns, autostradas, etc. – are the class of road most typically associated with the manner of driving that is the subject of this chapter – i.e. cruising – a moment's reflection reminds us that this is a practice which may equally well be enjoyed on A-roads, minor roads and the roads of history. From the bird's-eye perspective of the motorway bridge, meanwhile, there is absolutely no way of telling which of the vehicles that whizzes by at a typical speed of 70–80mph is engaged in an act of cruising (as defined below) and which, by contrast, is, for example, fleeing. By placing the driver's automotive consciousness at the centre of each driving-event rather than functionalities that pertain to the car-as-transportation (road-type, journey-type) we can begin to grasp the true diversity of the ‘travel’ being undertaken on any given stretch of road (Dant and Martin 2001: 151; Edensor 2003: 161; Merriman 2012: 217–18) and, I would suggest, marvel at the way in which the driver in Car A travelling at 80mph is engaged in such a qualitatively different motoring experience to the driver in Car B travelling at an identical speed (Pearce 2012). Paused thus on a bridge not only over a hypothetical motorway but also between this chapter and the last, I wish to propose that the cognitive/ affective distance between fleeing and cruising can be both miniscule and substantive. For the most part, this chapter will focus on the latter since – as will be seen from my attempt at a definition below – the manner of driving most typically evoked by the term cruising is also the one that, if conditions are favourable, facilitates the type of thinking that may be associated with personal reflection, problem-solving, meditation or the practice of mindfulness…