There's definitely truth in that. After learning to drive, I found that the sense of vague-but-uninformative flow in the sight of traffic, that ant-like busyness, is gone. Now it all has meanings. Worse, I'm now hypnotized by scenes of cars trying to pass each other in the one-lane driveways below my apartment. A trainwreck of five cars going one way, three the other, and two coming in from the side, might keep me at the window for half an hour.