Let’s state the obvious: driving conditions vary hugely from country to country.

Let’s support the obvious with some stereotypes: India’s is mostly bedlam on wheels. China’s is a work in progress with a mix of unskilled and wacky drivers in equal measures. In Russia, it’s a game of roulette. Wrong turn and you lose. In the USA drivers are often armed and dangerous.

In Europe, the spectrum of driver skills is broad and colourful. Germans are known as efficient, fast and phlegmatic, Italians as fast, inefficient and friendly, French as insolent, fast and efficient, Greeks as wayward, fast and friendly. The list goes on and on.

Australians are rarely mentioned when driving habits are listed on global ratings scales. As a fairly empty country of wide open and often deserted rural roads, it’s a nation where the descriptions ‘bad drivers’ and ‘too much traffic’ are mostly overlooked.

Not so anymore. According to recent mainstream news reports, the days of relaxed and mostly peaceful driving days are numbered in Australia.

For most of the year, I live in the world’s most liveable city.

Driving in the world’s most liveable city has turned a corner recently and hit a wall of anger. Yep, it appears that Melbourne’s drivers are mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore.  Our single remaining quality daily newspaper, the Melbourne Age, recently published a series of articles about ‘road rage’, a term not often heard in Australia’s commuting circles.

I read the series and immediately wondered how much truth there was to these claims of rampant road rage.

In Australia? Are they kidding me?

Actually, they weren’t kidding me at all.

Previously, I considered Australia to be so big and empty of cars that road rage complaints would be considered a tad grandiose.

And yet, only last week I was tailgating a silver haired driver whose head barely appeared above the steering wheel travelling 10 kilometres below the speed limit while hugging the fast lane. I also yelled several ‘F’ words at another driver who failed to indicate at a right turn therefore impeding my progress by at least 180 extra seconds while I waited at two consecutive red lights.

Why was I angry?

Other than an impatient nature, I had no logical reason. Just because I derive no pleasure from city driving doesn’t mean other drivers don’t. Not everyone considers an urban car trip as merely a quick way to get from point A to point B, as do I. Some people obviously like passing the time getting from A to B in a leisurely fashion and I try to allow consideration for that possibility, remote as it may be.

So, I tried to look at those two wayward drivers from their perspectives. Maybe one of them was from out of town and looking for a clear road sign. Perhaps the other was confused about the turn. Was it the correct street? No signs indicated it was, or not.

Then I understood how road rage in Australia has taken root and festered. Sure, our roads are more crowded than they were only ten years ago. In such a cashed up economy, everyone can afford to buy a car. So they do. Naturally, the roads are more crowded.

What hasn’t changed at all is the lack of clear signage. Tiny street signs, obscured behind trees, bent at weird angles because of vandalism or accident or hidden amongst other signs indicating ‘No Right Turn’ or ‘No Parking’ or ‘One Way’ or ‘Leaving Woop Woop Shire’ or ‘Police Are Checking Drink Drivers’ or a combination of all of the above, don’t stand out very well with such competition for attention. You can’t see the wood for all the trees, or the road.

Now I assume that most drivers in Australia are merely lost. I’m convinced that Australian signage is among the worst in the world. For a sophisticated Anglophone country, road signs in Australia are pathetically inadequate. Street names change abruptly for no apparent reason other than the fact that an indistinct local government boundary has been crossed. One major cross town street in the inner northern suburbs of Melbourne changes its name five times in fewer than five kilometres, with almost no visible signs to indicate the changes. Pity the poor traveller looking for an address in this street.

Too many signs are posted on streetlight poles causing the most important one, the name of the cross street, to become nearly invisible. Making matters worse, the number of these often superfluous signs is growing. Local signs indicating that a public pool or school or library or rubbish dump or park, in addition to speed limits and traffic instructions all may share the same light pole. This is simply ridiculous.

Addresses are numbered randomly, once again according to indistinct local government boundaries. In a few kilometres along a major road, one side of the street may display businesses and houses with numbers ranging, for instance, from 1200 to 1600 while the other side has numbers ranging from 183 to 771, as much to my distress, I recently discovered while searching for a business on a very busy Melbourne street. Am I the only confused driver who’s relying on the proposition of a logical numbering system? Seeing a clearly posted address, 191, on one side, expecting to see 192 across the street but facing 1312 instead? Frustrated? Indeed I was.

Making a U-turn in a busy street attempting to find 192 many blocks now behind me became an impossible task. I couldn’t have withstood the road rage incurred.  I gave up visiting that business and luckily found a similar one further down the same road, a random shopping experience I didn’t expect to have. Most drivers aren’t so lucky.

Pity the poor traveller or country driver unfamiliar with Australian cities and their random methods of numbering dwellings and businesses. No wonder these wandering drivers searching for an address so often suffer insults and threats from other drivers coping with rampant road rage.

Or drivers are lost while window shopping, which many country drivers do when in the big city. Used to doing their shopping from the windows of their cars without traffic collecting in a queue behind them, bumpkins blown in to the big smoke for a big day out are prime road rage targets.

Small country towns still enjoy relatively empty roads. Country drivers in big cities tend to forget about other cars. They drive as they would at home, not worrying about other cars or pedestrians or time-poor commuters and everyone else.

Unfortunately, Australian urban road rage has become compounded by a third peak hour traffic rush, the dreaded school pick up time. Between 15:00 and 16:00 many roads are now clogged with large SUVs containing one parent and one or two children. Apparently, kids don’t walk to and from school anymore. Their little legs can’t handle the strain of walking combined with post school sports activities, dance classes, band practice and homework so they must be chauffeured from one venue to another. Helicopter parents are contributing much to road rage. Double parking their large SUVs on busy roads outside school gates while waiting for little Justin or Caitlin is part of daily Australian life nowadays. Who cares if they block traffic for thirty minutes or so?

Years of comparatively stress-free driving in Australia and abroad have cushioned me from the effects of road rage and I’d like to maintain that finely tuned equilibrium.

My preference is for less stress in life so I’ve devised a personalised sure-fire solution to this road rage problem.

I avoid driving between 15:00 and 16:00 in order to reduce recurrence of road rage; parent chauffeuring period annoys me.

Actually, I avoid driving between 07:00 and 11:30, from 12:00 until 14:45 and from 16:00 until 20:00 as well.

This schedule leaves me with two relatively stress free daylight driving gaps of between 11:30 until 12:00 and 14:45 until 15:00, a whole 45 minutes of expletive free drive time.

Here’s how it works: 07:00 until 09:30 is morning peak hour and best avoided so harried and impatient commuters can get to work on time and I don’t compete with them for road space. From 09:30 until 11:30 seniors take to the streets en masse to do their shopping and socialising. I learned long ago to avoid getting stuck behind a car driven by someone wearing a white hat. The lawn bowls club rush for getting to the match on time takes up the hours between 09:30 until 11:30. Between 12:00 and 14:45 is the general lunch rush when the roads are packed with unhurried shoppers (read lost), delivery vans, postal trucks, construction semi-trailers, council bin collectors, hard rubbish removalists, road maintenance vehicles and people who drive to lunch. From 15:00 until 16:00 is the dreaded pick-up the kids rush followed immediately by the evening peak which now lasts until at least 20:00.

I have two clear windows of stress reduced drive-time opportunity: 11:30 until 12:00 and from 14:45 until 15:00, which adds up to 45 minutes of passive-aggressive driving liberty and makes me fairly happy.

By the way, from 20:00 until 07:00, Australian city roads are comparatively empty apart from drunks and long distance truckers. Contrast this with Australian country roads which between dusk and dawn are crowded with roaming wildlife ranging in size from tiny endangered possums to huge camels and buffalos.

Driving at night in country Australia is a fraught-with-danger experience. Kangaroos do not bounce off windscreens. They obliterate them.

Australian road rage? C’mon, tell them you’re laughing.

Naked Facts:

The Melbourne Age’s series of road rage stories begin here: http://theage.drive.com.au/roads-and-traffic/retaliation-against-selfish-drivers-just-not-worth-it-20130320-2gezs.html

For a better understanding of Australia’s road rules see: www.ntc.gov.au