STEP AWAY FROM THE CAR.

I DISLIKE DRIVERS who flash their left-turn signal only after halting at a stoplight, and police cars that ostentatiously patrol important roads slowing traffic to a crawl. I dislike drivers who, on planning a left turn from the middle lane of a one-way street, glare at you with self-righteous outrage when you pull up next to them and make your left turn from the correct lane. But I really like the drivers on the Discovery Channel's new reality show Canada's Worst Driver.

To get on the show you must be nominated. And hundreds were, by their spouses, friends, co-workers and mothers-in-law. What civic-minded wife wouldn't turn in her husband over his rolling stops? All responsible organizations have a witness protection unit for whistle-blowers on office sex or bulimia in the washroom. The Good Canadian isn't simply law-abiding, he's an Enforcement Officer in civilian clothes.

The eight nominees chosen are not fit to drive in the Gobi desert on a clear day, but every one of them has a driving licence in good order from a Canadian province. Heather, 59, from Medicine Hat, is my personal favourite. She has an unwavering stare of blank incompetence as she grips the wheel and steers a glacial 25 km/h in a 60-km zone looking neither left nor right. Madalena, gum chewing and mobile phone talking, barely notices the road, ends up in the ditch half the time, and relies on the kindness of (male) strangers to get her out. With her animal sexuality, what man wouldn't? Chris, 31, looks like Dr. Fu Manchu and is too scared to get in his car. If this series helps him back into it, God help us all.

As far as I can see, in a general way, driving styles reflect ancestry and national character. I haven't a clue why. As a rule of thumb, when driving I try to avoid peoples of the Orient, men wearing hats, ladies of my age and elderly Jewish gentlemen in the suburbs. Men tend to be better drivers than women, North Americans and western Europeans better than anywhere else, and younger people quicker learners than their elders.

Europeans make much more fuss about their driving skills than North Americans, probably because until a generation or so ago, having a car was more of a big deal than it ever was in postwar North America. The British are immensely proud of their driving skills and especially of the roundabout, an invention that operates on driver courtesy and is especially loved when fed by at least four roads -- two of them blind. It is a fiendish device and so venerated that you have the feeling many Brits get up in the morning to find their favourite roundabout and spend the day going around it. British soldiers are doubtless building roundabouts in Baghdad, which should tie up baffled Americans in splendid five-tank collisions.

The attributes for good driving include intelligence, hand-to-eye coordination and agility. Just why the Chinese who have a surfeit of these characteristics individually are such ghastly drivers is one of the mysteries of nature. The Canadian style, I'd say, is Bold Chinese. Canadian drivers are polite to each other and excessively so to pedestrians (whose self-important street-crossing habits ought to be culled by the import of European drivers). Canadians are enthusiastic self-regulators. Drive Canadian and you'll manage to get around nearly as fast as the speed limit allows.

Last week, I drove myself to the first International Conference on Distracted Driving, wondering whether the conference would come out for or against it. Organized by the Canadian Automobile Association, it had workshops with statistics and information on driver distraction. Attendees learned that drivers got distracted by events outside the car, children inside it, pets all over and, of course, the dreaded cellphone. Sadly, the conference learned, you couldn't quantify the causes of collisions because police tend not to note whether you were looking in your handbag for a lipstick when hitting the trailer ahead, and a driver tends not to highlight the brawl he was having with his wife when he jackknifed.

The new technology will solve all. Among gadgets being tested are gearshift locks that prevent drivers from shifting gears if they haven't buckled up. In Sweden, their seatbelt solution is to temporarily block any radio operation. Infiniti cars have a diabolical software option with a camera and program that record lane markings as the vehicle moves, and if sensing any deviation without any turn signal activation, the system warns the driver with a sound signal (electric shocks later?).

Here's my take. Everything distracts while driving. The problem is not distractions but inability to multi-task. Any driver should be able to multi-task and the best can with verve -- taxi drivers, delivery people, police, and mothers on the school run. Some people can't, so different levels of driving licences might be in order. A basic licence would entitle a person to drive a car solo, with no electronics, during daylight hours in decent weather. The next level would chance cloudy days and an hour after sunset and before sunrise. The top level would permit a person to take everyone in their car, including estranged spouses, and drive day and night in hurricane Katrina while chatting on a cellphone and listening to rap.

As for Heather, I'm afraid, my dear, it's a bicycle.

PHOTO (COLOR)

~~~~~~~~

By Barbara Amiel