The way people drive, drives me crazy!

Thing is, I'm not the only one complaining. I get tons of letters on a regular basis, from concerned Islanders, worried about drivers who constantly fail to stop at stop signs, fail to yield to pedestrians at crosswalks, ignore school buses and their flashing lights, exceed the legal speed limit, etc.

What is everyone's hurry that they can't slow down? What is so urgent about someone's day that they can't even stop to let a seven-year old child, walking to school, cross the street? As reader and Island resident, George Kim, mentioned last week in a letter to us, "it's an accident waiting to happen."

That same week, I received a letter from another Island resident, amazed at the fact that drivers fail to stop for school buses flashing their lights, on L'Ile-des-Soeurs Blvd, around Berlioz. What convoluted sense of entitlement allows these drivers to think that they can disregard the law and common sense and breeze through stop signs, crosswalks and the odd pedestrian or cyclist unfortunate enough to be in their path?There's a joke circulating on cyberspace, which pretends to be a Ministère des Transports du Québec Official Guide for new drivers in the province. The tongue- in-cheek document offers the following "recommendations".

1) Turn signals will give away your next move. A confident Quebec driver avoids using them. 2). Under no circumstance should you maintain a safe distance between you and the car in front of you, because somebody will fill in the space, putting you in an even more dangerous situation. 3) Braking is to be done as hard and as late as possible to ensure that your ABS kicks in. For those of you without ABS, it's a chance to strengthen your leg muscles. 4) Always brake and rubberneck when you see an accident or even someone changing a tire. This is seen as a sign of respect for the victim. 5) Learn to swerve abruptly without signaling. Quebec is the home of high-speed slalom-driving; thanks to the Ministère des Transports du Québec, which puts pot-holes in key locations to test drivers' reflexes and keep them alert.

Are you chuckling while reading this? Of course! So am I. Comedy is only funny when it mirrors the absurdity of our daily lives and accurately reflects our reality. Drivers do all of the above, on a regular basis. Some of it is human nature, some of it is associated with this sense of urgency we experience every single day in North America and some are simply bad habits, which have firmly entrenched themselves in our daily lives.

The truth is this, however: I find myself increasingly tired of people driving around like the world owes them something. To paraphrase the inimitable Marc Twain, "the world owes you nothing; it was here first." And it wants you to stop driving like a jackass.