THE A9 is driving us to distraction.

At 273 miles long, it's sometimes described as Scotia's spine, possibly because we go up and down it with a shiver.

Beginning at Cadgers Brae, north of Polmont, and ending at Thurso, it's certainly our most talked about road.

The section between Perth and Inverness has been dubbed the killer A9, as if the fatalities were caused by the road itself strangling people rather than by human drivers displaying impatience and rage.

But this news just in some time ago: the first survey of driver behaviour since the installation of average speed cameras found A9 users now less likely to encounter road rage or risky overtaking.

Sounds good, though the camera project has run into opposition, not least from a 10,000-strong Facebook campaign, to which we must accord respect, and from Danny Alexander, Liberal Democrat MP and Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

Everyone wants the whole thing dual carriageway, including the Scottish Government, whose plans - its supporters say - were hampered by Danny's cronies making it spend the money on Edinburgh's vanity trams.

But enough politics or we'll go off the rails and into the middle of the road, where dubious politicians live and dangerous motorists drive.

Among dangers on the A9 are those stretches where dual carriageway merges back into single. Here, hurriers obsessed with overtaking everybody sometimes cut in too late. Sometimes, too, otherwise sensible overtaking drivers just don't notice the dual carriageway ending signs.

Long stretches of single carriageway lead to rash overtaking, sometimes by rash overtakers, sometimes by usually careful drivers going for it ill-advisedly after being stuck for 20 minutes behind a wee man in a flat cap driving at 40 mph.

Risky overtaking per se is always committed by males aged under-35, a demographic that should never be allowed to drive in the first place.

But it's road rage that fascinates me more. Even I've suffered from it. It's billed as something felt by aggressive drivers, but my experience is that it's induced in ordinary, decent ratepayers like moi by aggressive drivers.

One incident - of avoiding rage - involved your hero on a badly designed road far from the A9, branching off a roundabout at Edinburgh's Cameron Toll. Here, three lanes have the width of two, leading to bottlenecks and unused space caused by drivers unable to get into their lane.

One driver had unthinkingly left her car's tail sticking into the middle lane. So I couldn't get past. When, eventually, I set off, another driver tailgated me. This often happens. If you've been involved in an incident not of your making, somebody thinks they'll rub it in by tailgating you.

I was by now annoyed and was watching the tailgater in my mirrors when I approached new and largely pointless traffic lights, positioned so that many drivers don't notice them till the last second, as happened in my case. If I'd braked hard, the tailgater would have crashed into my rear and, as the light was on amber, I breenged through.

Shortly afterwards, at more traffic lights, an angry red-haired man gestured at me through his driver's window. Intrigued, I pulled my car up to his, wound down my window and asked what his problem was, and he ululated some spittle-flecked thesis about my driving through a red light.

Never a master of tongue fu, I tried explaining myself but omitted to mention the tailgater and merely alluded weakly to the light still being amber.

But at least, when I got home, I was glad I hadn't lost the nut and had tried calmly to engage the poltroon rationally, even if I forgot my reasons. Consciously, I had breathed deeply and, while annoyed and bewildered, had kept my cool.

Many of you, I know, look to me as a role model and force your children to read this column that they might grow to be dependable, worthy citizens. So I must emphasise that I deplore the increasingly common habit of speeding through amber-cum-red signals, usually caused by wanting to avoid another extended stay at over-long red lights.

But, in the dramatic case outlined above, I plead extenuating circumstances. And not looking where I was going.

Other drivers madden us. They're too slow, too fast, too rude, and too dim. But we all need to breathe deeply and relax. Take it easy and you'll get there in the end, even - if you have said your prayers - on the A9.