While we feel it’s good practice to “question everything always” as advised by ancient Greek philosopher Socrates (469-399 B.C.), we still find it hard to believe — yet must come to grips with the possibility that (however, remote) —  what has been determined about Asheville’s drivers is true.

Yes, dear readers, we at the Daily Planet are still recovering from deep shock over a recent reported rating (by the website www.Insurify.com) that Asheville, long known as “The Paris of the South” for its culture and beauty, has been ranked (highly ironically, in our view, and feeling like a cold slap in the face) as the city with the “rudest” drivers in North Carolina.

Going by the famous dictum of Socrates (who is widely considered the wisest of the ancient Greek philosophers and the founder of modern Western philosophy) that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” we wonder if, indeed, reported findings that Asheville has the worst drivers in the state are true, how could it be so? 

We hasten to note that Socrates uttered his famous dictim at his trial for impiety and corrupting youth, for which he was subsequently sentenced to death.

Nonetheless, based strictly on our anecdotal and experiential evidence, everyone with whom we have spoken and from what we have seen with our own eyes (as a newspaper) through the years, the universal assertion is, yes, the drivers around Asheville generally very possibly are the rudest in North Carolina, but that it is because this tourist-oriented, “Beer City” plays host to an incredibly high proportion of tourists and newcomers running our complex system of often curvy, narrow and steep-elevation streets, while trying not to hit inebriated partying pedestrians (who ignore “Don’t walk” signs with impugnity) along with the added distraction of trying to follow instructions from “Maps” on their cellphones.

Another possibility is that it is the natives and long-time residents (who are non-natives) who are causing our “rudest” drivers’ rating, but we doubt it. They know the score here.

And, maybe www.Insurify.com got it wrong in its data collection and, instead (as we like to think), Asheville has the kindest drivers in the state. “It would be pretty to think so,” one could say in that case, as, in a different context, literary luminary and former Asheville resident F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in a famous passage in his greatest work, “The Great Gatsby.”