Addendum

When we drive on the road, most of the time, it's impossible to see drivers of other cars around us. Only if the sun hits at the right angle can I make out the driver behind me in the rear view mirror; only if I take my eyes off the road can I peek at a driver directly to my left or right. Who drives directly in front of me is almost always a mystery, unless I can somehow make out their face in their rear view mirror given they don't have a tinted rear windshield. I doubt most drivers perceive their neighbors in terms such as, "That [person of unknown race, gender, and age] is such an asshole for cutting me." Human perception dictates that we're much more likely to say, "That [red Jeep] is such a dick."

Unless whichever human driver I happened to offend manages to see me personally through the various (and more) methods mentioned above, all they will think is: "Wow, what a fucking retarded Volvo." In fact, it's not just the angry driver who thinks I'm a Volvo. Everyone who sees me really sees only a Volvo, most of the time, under normal circumstances. Does that mean, at any time while I'm driving, that I believe even for a split second that I actually physically look like a Volvo? Do I start believing I'm a car?

What if I have always been in that driver's seat, since birth? It's awkward at first, trying to master the break, the accelerator, the wheel and whatnot. But every new driver gains a sense for the car's motion, sooner or later. Keeping a constant safe distance between me and the car in front becomes habit, instinct, intuition. We feel the engine's struggle when climbing a steep hill; we know when it's too late to stop for a yellow light. We are aware of our car-ly dimensions when we perform a perfect parallel parking into a spot just barely big enough. As drivers, we become (as if) one with our car. After all, we are (largely) responsible for every move it makes. We're able to switch freely between consciousnesses as (driver of) a car and as our human selves. It's never a problem, never an issue of imprisonment or misunderstanding. Neither you nor any other person on the road really believes each other to be cars because everyone can simply step out of one. As soon as the door opens, the unit in perception changes. It's not really a mean red Jeep I was talking about; it's some cueball douchebag. It's no longer a wacky Volvo; it's just another Asian chick who can't drive.

And that is where the analogy fails. But, I ask again, what if I have always been in that driver's seat since birth, and so has everyone else, and it's impossible to ever get out of the car? What if our bodies are actually fused to the car metabolically, such that we are replenished when the car "eats," and our wastes are eliminated when the car exhausts? What if all the windows have always been tinted to the darkest shade on every side, such that no one ever realizes that for each car, there is an inner driver who is a separate being from the mere car? We can believe we're all cars because 1) from what I can tell of myself and others, we're all cars; 2) the car responds to my conscious commands, moves as I do, and essentially is my functional body; 3) what on earth does an inner driver even look like, if one exists at all? No one has ever seen one, much less proven its existence. Furthermore, current science has discovered, with more and more detail, exactly how each part of our car-bodies work. There is some sort of nervous system that connects our external car bodies to an inner command compartment, a centralized computer. There are various ways to relay messages from that central command room to the rest of the car parts. Sometimes weird things happen when we remove one car part and the central command doesn't catch up to the fact and still thinks it's there. The car is a very mysterious and complex system. It might even come up with the illusion that it exists and has a consciousness!

But the presence of a driver is something forever outside the realm of consideration, since science only tests the testable, the empirical. In controlled and limited settings. Only to hypotheses we can create with our limited imagination as cars.

I can and do accept that I'm a car like everyone else. But since very many years ago, at an age that Piaget (another of our limited sciences) says is impossible to have such abstract thought, I realized I could dissociate from the car and, in fact, wonder about myself as a driver. What is that being like? I wish I could strip away all my car fluff and see, because despite what everyone else believes, I know the car is only such a minimal part of what I am, what reality is. Are we thus fused to the car because we live in an environment otherwise uninhabitable, similar to how we have to wear special suits in space? I question the very dimensions of the world we perceive, peeking from behind our heavily tinted windshield. How does the world look like to I the Driver? I cannot begin to imagine, given our so-very-limited perception and imagination from having always lived as mere cars.

I suppose it's a Plato's cave type of thing.
P.S. All vehicular references purely arbitrary. I are an good driver I swear.