Turning a Blind Eye

America is pretty lax about Drink Driving. a huge number of people seem to do it and there's no real social stigma attached (unless you get caught.) Most people have at least one funny story of how they narrowly avoided failing a sobriety test at one point or another.

For a Brit, that's pretty shocking. Over in England, drink driving is taken incredibly seriously. You automatically lose your licence for a year if you get caught (as opposed to just three months in America - less if you take a 'driver's ed' course.)

What's proven to be a far more compelling reason not to drink and drive, however, is the scorn and condemnation you'd get from your British peers. It's not seen as funny, or mischievous. It's seen as reckless and irresponsible and anybody with half a brain doesn't do it.

Funnily enough, however, both countries take a similarly lax attitude towards something that's proven to be four times more dangerous than drink driving - talking on your mobile phone while behind the wheel.

In America especially, it's as if half of the drivers you pass on busy roads have a cell phone clamped to the ear. I guess it's easier for them than me (my car has a manual transmission) but it still leaves them unable to use their turn signals or steer effectively - so they don't.

These irresponsible idiots blather away and cause untold accidents and injuries... Yet police still seem resolutely unwilling to punish them for their behaviour.

Studies have proven a driver is four times more likely to have an accident than if they'd quaffed more booze than an 0.8 reading on a Breathalyzer. Shouldn't this logically mean they should suffer consequences four times worse for their actions? Or, to play devil's advocate, that drink drivers should be punished four times less severely (a $5 fine and a warning, that would mean.)

I don't know. But what I do know is that people who talk on their cell phones while driving are irresponsible idiots and I have nothing but scorn for them.

Americans are the worst drivers in the world, ever.

Just how terrible American drivers are is something that continues to amaze me.

They are just so astonishingly, universally bad at driving in New Jersey, I'm surprised the federal government hasn't confiscated all our cars and demanded we ride around on donkeys instead.

The sheer awfulness of the average NJ driver encompasses many levels.

First off, there's just the bad driving - like nobody actually educated people how things like the brakes, indicators, steering etc. could all be operated in synchronisation. People are just bad at driving cars. Most motorists can't even handle the simple task of staying in one lane of traffic - they drift back and forth over the white lines like a drunk stumbling down the street. Nobody indicates when they turn. Nobody indicates when they change lane. Nobody actually bothers looking to see if a car is presently occupying the space they intend to move into.

This is probably why NASCAR, the American national motor sport, consists of nothing more sophisticated than driving around in a circle for five hundred miles.

The second level of 'bad driving' is the average driver's attitude. Driving isn't considered a privilege like it is in England. Here owning a car is your God given American right, just like owning firearms. Driving that enormous Lincoln, I know how it feels to be 'King of the Road' when you're behind the wheel of a good, solid American car. But many America drivers act with total disregard for other road users.

The stunts they pull astonish me. Pulling out of blind corners. Cutting people up. Tail gating. Speeding. How there aren't more accidents astonishes me. It seems the only rule on American roads is that you can't let any accidents you cause be declared 'your fault' or it'll hurt your insurance premiums.

For the millions of illegal immigrant road users, who have no insurance, I guess there are no rules.

Drivers here in New Jersey don't care about other road users. They show no courtesy, generosity or concern. They'll happily drive you off the road if it means they're one car length in front of you by the time you reach those traffic lights.

The final level of bad driving involves distractions. Whether it's driving drunk, which seems to carry no social stigma here, or talking on your mobile phone, Americans seem to love 'multi-tasking.' People put on their make up while driving. They read books. They upload songs to their iPods. With modern 'sidekick' mobiles, drivers even send emails while cruising at 55!

Whether it's a trip to the super market or going cross-country to California, driving on American roads is just plain dangerous. I have never driven more slowly or more attentively than driving here in New Jersey. When you're behind the wheel, you can never anticipate when the drivers in front and behind of you will pull some kind of f**kwitted manoeuvre and put your life in danger.

It's making me a better driver - but a terrified one.