Mathematics is out to get you

Yes, there really are a lot of idiots on the roads. There aren't as many as there appear to be, but you're more likely to meet them - at least the ones that drive too fast or too slow.

Driver speeds will typically be a curve that looks a bit like a normal curve. The tails will be a rather foreshortened, because most people do drive near the speed limit. The average is probably a little bit over the limit, at least on roads that are clear enough to do it.

But who are you going to meet? Suppose you drive for an hour on a freeway. Someone who drives exactly the same speed as you will stay exactly the same distance from you the whole trip. Someone who drives only 5km/h faster will need to start no more than 5km behind you, or you won't see them. But someone who drives 10km/h faster can start 10km behind. Result? You'll see twice as many of them as the 5km/h faster ones. The higher the speed, the more of them you see.

The same argument applies in reverse for slow drivers; you will catch up with more of them the slower they are. So people who drive at silly speeds will be over-represented in the drivers you see.

But it gets worse than that for those who are non-average - that is, hoons and hat-wearing Volvo drivers. Consider a line far enough from your speed to be "too fast". If you are on the average, there will be few drivers above it. You'll see them more often than other drivers, but the numbers will still be small. However, if you buy a Volvo and a hat and start driving slowly, the line will shift down, and the numbers above it will increase rapidly. The normal curve, and those like it, typically look exponential as you come in from each end, and only flatten out at the middle.

So hat-wearers will tend to encounter a great many people exceeding the speed limit - much more than they remember from their youth. And hoons will find the roads infested with slowpokes.

So remember - the more you drive at the same speed as everyone else, the fewer idiots you will encounter. And the more you drive like one kind of idiot, the more of the other sort you will have to deal with. It's just mathematics.