Last Monday, I drove 772 kilometres from Midtown Manhattan to Toronto, the last leg of an east coast U.S. road trip. It’s always good to come back home, and the first sight of the CN Tower was a beacon that welcomed me back.

The other familiar GTA welcome was the driver of a Porsche Panamera sedan who weaved in and out of three lanes of fairly heavy Gardiner Expressway traffic at a much faster speed than the 100 km/h or so everyone else was doing, barely missing the cars he was passing.

Certainly reckless drivers like this exist everywhere and always have, but after a week of driving American Interstates and through some bigger cities, I didn’t see as much recklessness as I routinely do here. It’s as if there’s a sign at the edge of the Greenbelt announcing a Highway Traffic Act-free zone.

A month ago I was driving my mom up from Windsor on Highway 401. As we passed Pearson Airport, where the highway is at its widest, a high-end SUV came up on our right side and passed perhaps a metre or two in front of my car and into the lane to our left, continuing to weave through multiple lanes of similarly heavy traffic. We both let out a yelp of surprise as it was so sudden and jarring, and my mom spoke of it for days.

Driving in Toronto is the closest we voluntarily come to death, and everybody who drives has experienced a scenario like this. If you don’t, you must have a guardian angel riding shotgun.

We all have our pet peeves about other drivers, such as moving too slow in the passing lane, or signalling to make a left turn only when the light turns green so those behind have no warning to shift lanes earlier. That one is particularly infuriating and so profoundly discourteous. If you’re one of those people, please explain why you do that.

These and other behaviours are all legitimate bad driving gripes, and point to the low skills and crummy testing we have here. I’ve driven in multiple European countries where you don’t see this kind of lackadaisical approach to driving. Rather, drivers in places such as Spain, Germany and the U.K. know how to operate their vehicles with precision: it’s serious business. Skilled drivers also makes cycling and walking in these places much more pleasant than here.

The recklessness goes beyond gripes — lives are at risk. The weaving is a most dramatic example of the lawlessness on all the roads in and around Toronto, not just the 400 series highways.

On city streets driver speed well above the limit, they race down residential streets and take corners much too fast. Then there are the stops signs and traffic lights. Stand by any one of the thousands in this city and you’ll soon see drivers running reds and treating stop signs as an option. Using a crosswalk is to play Russian roulette.

All of this happens with impunity. Toronto Police seem to have largely given up traffic enforcement, a dereliction of duty. This has led to the proliferation of those pathetic “Slow Down” signs that beg drivers to obey the law.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a column about the lack of sidewalks in some Etobicoke neighbourhoods that garnered some strange responses to it and the subsequent reporting on the issue. In the same breath, some people said they didn’t want sidewalks, but needed those “Slow Down” signs because cars went too fast, putting them and their kids in danger. Somehow two plus two equals nothing.

I like driving, but car culture is a kind of “Stockholm syndrome,” the psychological phenomenon where the hostage begins to side with the hostage taker. No matter the carnage cars produce, attempts to mitigate behaviour, to solve the problem, are painted as a “war on the car.”

The solutions include redesigning roads and proper enforcement, not just the occasional “blitz” that fails to make permanent change. Though I’m wary of increased surveillance, photo radar on every block and red-light cameras at every intersection would quickly curb a lot of deadly behaviour.

Here’s the rub: the war on the car is nonsense because the enemy is from within. Those guys careening around the big highways carelessly, putting other drivers’ lives in peril? They’re not much different from lawbreakers on city streets, yet there’s a disconnect somewhere.

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Cars cocoon us from the reality around us. From the kid on the crosswalk. The elderly person on a sidewalk a step or two from somebody doing 60 km/h in a 30 km/h zone. Once inside, cars prevent us from feeling empathy for those outside, yet all drivers would want the Porsche and SUV I saw off the road.

Solving this problem will save driver and non-driver lives alike. That should be the only war to fight.