Plenty of comments followed last week’s column, in which Between the Lines ventured into the wild and cranky world between the white lines of a major road.

The reaction online shows there are not many topics that get us worked up as much as driving – in particular, the behaviour of other on the road.

And why not? The stakes are high.

Take your eyes off the road, turn at the wrong time, or drive too fast, and someone could very well end up dead.

Which makes me think using your indicators is a no-brainer – letting other drivers know where you’re going really boosts your chances of staying alive.

But this appears to be a logical leap too far for many, and if there was a theme to the comments from our readers it’s that drivers are, in the words of one, “being complete and utter narcissists”.

“They are busy on the phone,” said one.

“People genuinely believe the road rules don’t apply to them” – another.

It’s hard to ignore how this wilful blindness on the road coincides with the shrinking of windows in modern car design, our tendency to keep the windows up around our bubble, with our attention on our phones. How many pedestrians don’t even look up from the phone to cross the road?

It’s pretty advanced engineering, today’s automobile. But only the human brain seems capable of voluntarily, and knowingly, operating one in such as way as to endanger our survival more than we need to. Given the tools to be brilliant, we manage to behave like Cro-Magnons, struggling with complex or unselfish thought.

One reader actually said he deliberately avoids indicating, for fear the other cars would speed up and not let him in their lane if they saw what he was about to do.

It shows the completely adversarial style many use on the road – like a battle. I prefer it when we try and keep each other alive.

Hit the comments section with gusto, because Between the Lines won’t return to this topic for a fair while – I promise. As we all know, once we get started on driving issues, it’s a long, long road.