The other day I was sitting in the car at a set of slow traffic lights in Sydney, attempting a right hand turn onto a busy road. The cars in front were waiting for pedestrians to saunter across and it looked like I was going to have to wait for another sequence of traffic lights to get a go. This, however, wasn’t good enough for the car behind me, a Jaguar, which roared out of the line of traffic, overtook me on the wrong side of the road, screamed around the corner against the red light and disappeared in a puff of self-important smoke.

I have seen a lot of bad behaviour in Sydney, but this took the cake for being the most impatient and dangerous. What sense of desperation or entitlement or entitled desperation convinced this driver they were above the laws of the land? My daughter has her L-plates and I’ve been taking her out on the roads, appalled by the impatience and rudeness of drivers cutting in and beeping their horns and generally doing their best to scare the living wits out of a novice. Driving in Sydney is like being stranded on an island with Piggy,...