Features

As we all know, the Citroen is bought by the sort of driver who likes to press his trousers and press wild flowers. But press on? No.

So when such a car wheezed out of a side turning in front of me yesterday, I was a bit disappointed. This was my first outing in the new Gallardo for a month, and now I was going to spend it stuck behind someone with no sense of style, no sense of joie de vivre.

Someone who was going to trundle along at 40. I should have been so lucky. In fact, the car settled to a diesely 30 until it came to a corner, when it was braked, often quite hard, to a speed most Victorian bargees would describe as "quite stately".

I was, I admit, becoming quite irritated by this so when it happened for the 14th time, I dropped a couple of cogs, ignited the injectors, and went for it... only to find a small hatchback coming the other way.

It was close; shut your eyes, and wait-for-the-impact close. And had we crashed, it would have been entirely my fault; the result of a moment's impatience, of a need to be somewhere else, of a desire for the journey to be over as quickly as possible. And therein lies, I think, the root cause of most accidents: boredom.

We're told by the enlightened that speed is not the major cause of accidents; it's inattentiveness. One minute you're cruising along with the gearbox in top and your mind in neutral. And the next, you're sailing through the Pearly Gates with bits of windscreen stuck in your face, wondering what on earth went wrong.

What we therefore need is some kind of entertainment while we drive, and that's why I'm so furiously opposed to the ban on using mobile phones when behind the wheel. We're told that it's impossible to concentrate when talking to someone else but that, of course, is nonsense.

You talk to your passengers. You berate your kids. You shout at other road users - and none of this is a particular cause of crashing.

My wife can cook supper, pacify a baby and make complicated tennis arrangements with friends on the phone all at the same time. And not once has she ever put the receiver down to find she's inadvertently cooked the baby and rocked the sausages to sleep.

The fact is that if I'm on the phone while behind the wheel, I'm conversing, I'm getting on with my life and as a result, I'm in less of a hurry to get to where I'm going. Talking to friends makes me a safer driver.