People Weirdly Drive Around Alone Wearing a Face Mask (or Two!)
We all saw these people during the pandemic, driving around wearing a face mask (or maybe two), all alone in their cars, driving, completely masked up.
Most Americans recognized the importance of wearing face masks in crowded indoor spaces. They may not have even agreed with the policy, but they went along with it to be good citizens. But this question vexed so many people: why are these people driving around alone with a mask on? Once and for all, here are the best guesses:
The most common reason was that they were driving to or from a place where a mask was required, such as work or a crowded store. Some people kept their masks on while running errands to avoid repeatedly putting it on and taking it off between locations. Others who had absentminded tendencies conditioned themselves to always wear it. If you always have it on, you can’t forget to put it on.
Face masks also served to keep faces warmer in colder months while waiting for the car to heat up for a few minutes in the bitter cold. Hot recycled breath was way warmer than the freezing cold air of a winter car sitting outside.
Perhaps the car was being used for a rideshare service, and you just missed the Uber or Lyft sticker? Drivers for these companies were required to have a mask on the whole time they were driving. In fact, their driver app monitored their face and could tell if the driver wasn’t wearing a mask. The driver may have had a bag of food to deliver and his company mandated that the driver must wear a mask for deliveries.
Perhaps they had just robbed a bank and the car was stolen and they didn’t want to get caught on traffic cameras. Ok, that one is far-fetched. But this is probably the most likely one:
They wear that mask just to confuse or piss other people off. That’s right, it’s a deliberate attempt to irritate others, and to cause controversy, maybe even to the point where they write a book about it and make it into a chapter. These people would get off on that idea.
