This is not about you. You are clearly an intelligent, discerning, talented and, if I may say so, attractive person who would never do anything profoundly stupid.

You are a competent driver. Also, those are very nice shoes you have on.

I just want to make clear before I go into rant mode that I am not ranting at you. I would never disparage my readers, just as I would never pander to them.

But maybe you, too, have noticed what's been happening on the roads. (You know, the lumpy, cratered coatings that build up periodically on the bricks and streetcar rails.)

I've become a rush-hour car commuter. Back when I rode the T to work, I arrived serene to the point of drowsiness. Now, I start my workday angry and shaken, full of adrenaline and profanity.

I used to have to work six or eight hours to get like that.

Who let all these idiots out on the roads? When did the morning commute become a bar fight?

Just once I would like to make it to 10 a.m. without a brush with death. I am not Indiana Jones. I am a copy editor. Looking up a foreign word is all the excitement I can cope with.

So I was not in the least surprised to read that GMAC Insurance discovered recently that if you give licensed drivers a 20-question written drivers test, more than 18 percent of them flunk it. Nationwide, that adds up to 38 million yahoos who no longer remember what to do at a flashing red light.

(Hint: The answer is not "flash back.")

Over a quarter of the Pennsylvania test-takers failed, and they are all playing chicken with me.

Last week I was almost creamed by an SUV that blew through a red light on Carson Street without even slowing down. I'm alive because I'm so used to the Pittsburgh interpretation of a yellow/newly red light ("some loser three cars behind you might have to stop") that I actually take my foot off the gas when approaching a green light and consider which hospital I'd like to be taken to.

But that was just the most recent and dramatic heart stopper in the car. (I stomped on the brake, my purse flung itself to the floor to protect my Giant Eagle Advantage Card, the yoga mat in the back seat temporarily lost consciousness.)

I realize that jaywalking is a league sport in this town, but if you're going to jaywalk - and you are, and I am too, right behind you - you should at least be brisk about it. I have seen jaywalking pedestrians saunter into thick, fast traffic as if they were exploring the Mylar balloon room at the Warhol.

Nobody remembers how stop signs and flashing lights work. Fortunately, except for the thugs who reckon they ALWAYS get to go first, without stopping, everyone is extremely polite. Drivers who stopped at a four-way before me have honked and looked impatient when I didn't go out of turn. Right neighborly, if a little confusing. In the absence of understood rules, everyone just sort of nods and waves and smiles, and then they drive verrrry slowly into each other.

And the difference between a flashing yellow and a flashing red? Anyone? Anyone? (Hint: "Electromagnetic wavelength" does not get you full credit on the written test.)

All those speeding up in the presence of an emergency vehicle and coming to a complete stop while merging into highway traffic must've read the driver's manual in a mirror.

The worst part is that, with the threatened transit cuts, roads are only going to get worse. Think of all the potential vehicular dimwits who are now safely tucked away on buses and trolleys but soon will stumble cluelessly into their cars to make left turns into oncoming traffic, stubbornly block you from merging and blind you with their high beams.

If so many would fail the written test, I can't even imagine the mayhem if they had to retake the skills test. Parallel parking. Turn signals!

Real retesting would get menaces off the road and encourage carpooling, walking, biking, transit use and living nearer your work.

And we can't have that. Got a Xanax?

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