Just a suspicion I have...

Does anyone else find that 4x4 drivers are more selfish than the average?

Obviously it's a selfish choice of vehicle - apart from farmers and other people who regularly have to drive off-road. It doesn't do the environment any favours. It uses up fossil fuel like nobody's business. It takes up more of the road, and more parking space. And of course it ensures that its owner is more likely to kill someone else than to die him/herself in an accident.

I did see a survey result a month or two ago that said that 4x4 drivers were more likely than others to be using mobile phones while driving. I think that fits in with my observations, too.

But in general driving courtesy - and the standard of courtesy is pretty high around here, particularly compared with the South East - don't you notice that 4x4s expect you to give way to them in doubtful situations, rather than vice versa?

I suppose expensive cars of all kinds lead their drivers to think they own, not just their car, but the road as well. The power in their engines leads them to think speed limits are not for them.

But in a 4x4 there's the added factor of sitting up above the rest of drivers. Perhaps that makes the 4x4 driver look down on the rest in a metaphorical way, not just literally.

Coach drivers have a name for the drivers of ordinary cars. Emmets. I.e. 'ants'. But then coach drivers are very good drivers on the whole. Their livelihoods depend on it.

One 4x4 driver actually wrote in to the paper to say that environmentally aware people who criticised the buying of 4x4s were just driven by jealousy that he could afford one and they couldn't.

I think that says a lot about the attitude of those who buy and drive them.