Adelaide has the worst drivers - but I can still complain | Peter Goers

Even when you are courteous on the road, your fellow motorists make you regret it, writes Peter Goers.

Sadly, South Australia has the unenviable reputation of having the worst drivers in Australia. I’m probably one of them but it doesn’t stop me complaining about worse drivers.

Why are we such shockingly discourteous and boorish drivers?

SA motorists were notorious for not letting vehicles into traffic. We’re surely better at doing that but often when you do show that courtesy you regret it.

You stop, let someone move into the traffic and about fifty percent of the time you get no thanks, no friendly little wave of acknowledgement. How rude.

Then you resent them even more. I tend to be overly grateful and semaphore my thanks which must look ridiculous but one is almost shocked by courtesy on the road.

Tailgating is terrifying and dangerous. It’s very bad on the SE Freeway where so often I feel I’m suddenly in Steven Spielberg’s film Duel. Then there are drivers who speed up when they see a pedestrian crossing in front of them or a car merging into a lane. Why? Of course everyone is in a hurry, everyone is frazzled and everyone is more important than everyone else and, thus, aggression rules.

Not so long ago in Australia the only people with 4WDs were the Leyland brothers, Tom Kruse the Birdsville mailman and adventurer and writer Valmai Hankel.

Now, inexplicably, every second person drives a bloody 4WD.

Every child must be dropped off and picked up from school in a 4WD. These cars only ever go off-road when clambering over a median strip to avoid traffic. They’ve never been closer to the donga than the Burnside Village Shopping Centre. You can’t see past these behemoths, you can’t park between them and often their lights blind you in your rear vision mirrors and this all legal.

The Southern and Northern Expressways are a triumph but the long stretch of the increasingly slow South Road for ingress and egress on to those expressways is now an avoidable nightmare. If it’s not gridlocked, trucks barrel around you. It is hell.

Almost every driver loathes and distrusts cyclists for good reason. The self-righteousness of many cyclists is galling and they flout road rules because unlike every other vehicle, they are completely unaccountable.

Angry young woman stuck in a traffic jam generic

It’s often impossible to give them a metre’s clearance so you are stuck behind a cyclist. T’other day I had to follow a cyclist along Anzac Highway, west of Brighton Road. This middle-aged cyclist merrily rode through a red light at the intersection of Adelphi Terrace and then went straight ahead in the turn left only late at Colley Terrace. This lycra-clad miscreant had blithely broken two road rules in 200 meters. A cyclist recently crashed into a friend’s stationary car and peddled away. My friend got out to inspect the damage as the hit and run cyclist rode off into the distance.

Nothing inflames cyclists more than the perfectly reasonable suggestion that their bikes need to be registered. This alone would finally make them accountable and make them less dangerous. Many cyclists are cognisant of road rules but many others give all cyclists a bad reputation.

We have more population, more traffic and more aggression and it’s getting worse. Our best drivers are truck drivers because they are highly experienced and invaluable.

I’m probably a lousy driver but I’m a Volvo driver and I delight in slowing down other drivers who annoy me. Stuff ‘em. If you don’t show courtesy you’re driving us all crazy.