WOULDN’T it be lovely to pull on long leather gloves? Wait, for there is more. To pull on long leather gloves and wear goggles before getting into your open-topped jalopy and driving down leafy lanes entirely devoid of other traffic, passing every so often through rosy villages full of lopsided cottages where you wave at passers-by and they wave back, and you are so happy in the sunshine that you whistle.

This column has already lamented the little-noticed (as usual) death of whistling. But driving for pleasure has also gone by the board. There is a reason for this, and it is contained in the following news bulletin: things have changed.

Today’s roads are crowded with gloveless drivers, including large numbers of testosterone-leaking beasts who, with no big, foreign wars to occupy them, stalk the land looking for battles, beating their breasts with one hand while the other steers recklessly through traffic.

The beasts, it seems, live in a state of permanent rage, though it is my contention that otherwise decent citizens are more often reduced to a state of fury by the calm malevolence of the beasts.

Bearing all that in mind, the nation was shocked to read that Glasgow is the road rage capital of Larger Britain. Glasgow? Glasgow! Glasgow, city of friendly banter and spontaneous conversation? Glasgow! Glasgow, city of laughter and jolly japes? Glasgow! How very dare they! I can see, through this interactive page, that this is getting you all riled up.

Well, if you’d calm down for a minute, we can also see that it isn’t just Glasgow. In international terms, Britland comes second only to yonder Italy as having the angriest, most impatient and anxious drivers in the western world. The swotty Swedes, by contrast, were deemed the calmest drivers.

Hmm. I have heard bad things about the outskirts of Stockholm though, right enough, I doubt if they’re as bad as the outskirts of Aberdeen or York at teatime, where I have had experience of trying to drive amidst rampaging herds of motoring wildebeest.

The BBC, a crowdfunded (compulsorily) broadcasting organisation, found a Scottish driver who lives in Sweden and instructed him to address the nation, which he did in the following terms: “Swedes, they’re generally not as hot-headed. In fact, I think they’re more frightened of confrontation. And they are very courteous people.”

The latter claim led to rioting in several rural areas, as it’s widely thought the Swedes are right rude or at best aloof, ken? However, the stuff about wanting to avoid confrontation rings true and has led to Swedish men getting a reputation for wimpishness. It is a good reputation to have, and I am happy to call such men brothers.

Even so, I’m not beyond getting mildly irritated at conspicuously bad drivers and, when I say bad, I’m not referring to their skills so much as their close kinship with Satan. Riddle me this: who is worse, the tailgater or the person angry at being tailgated?

Perhaps the Australians have it right with their crime of “predatory driving”, which carries a jail sentence of up to five years and which, on the face of it, ought to criminalise those out to cause trouble on the roads rather than those reacting to it. Of course, rather than reacting, we should all drive like Gandhi: in our bare feet with our robes getting tangled on the gear stick.

Take heart, folks. Most behaviour on the road is good. People do let you join the traffic nearly all the time. They do forgive honest errors. Scientific analysis by qualified experts reveals that humans divide into two classes: nutters and kind people, with the latter dominating by about five to one. Maybe four to one. OK, maybe about half and half.

The whole truth is that we live in the Rage Age. Rage is all the rage. It isn’t just road rage. There is air rage, computer rage and packaging rage. Even the normally well-mannered world of liberal politics has Brexit-rage.

As regards driving, an activity that should be pleasant has become fraught, and that’s before we even mention the curse of cycling (could that be the collective term, a curse of cyclists?).

Until the advent of driverless cars, I fear traffic tantrums will remain something up with which me must put. But I remain sceptical about Glasgow being the most road-raging city in Britain. That sounds to me like a put-up job.