Homicidal driving is still all the rage

This year's Paris auto show has showcased new BMWs and Aston Martins and also some of the smallest cars known to man. There was an adorable half-size car called ForTwo and a Venturi the size of a baby buggy. I thought this downshifting might be good news for a nation prone to road rage. If people care enough about the environment to get a tiny car or an electric model, surely they'll care more about pedestrians, cyclists and their fellow drivers?

In the past week I have seen many of these half-pint cars racing around Paris. But if anything, as the cars shrink, people get meaner. Some of the incidents I saw this week were ridiculous. I saw one man get out of his car and kick the door of another at a red light. I lost count of the times I saw people mouth "connard" (dickhead).

Friends tell worse road rage stories. My friend Tycen had two people in one day tell him to "bouges ton cul" (move your ass) while he was cycling. Another man chased him down a street in a car just to give him the "F*** you" sign.

But these are minor incidents compared with the case of one Frederic Rabillon, who lost his left hand and several fingers of his right trying to blow up radar speed traps. He said from his hospital bed this week that he had "no regrets" about his action.

I know London has its share of road rage but I never crossed a road there and felt as if the drivers wanted to run me down just for fun.

Compare that with the poll once done by the French Association for the Prevention of Bad Behaviour at the Steering Wheel (yes, it really exists) which found that 87 per cent of pedestrians have difficulty using zebra crossings. And 60 per cent of the drivers polled found their fellow motorists "rude, aggressive and quick to insult".

Mobile phones contribute to the problem. Many Parisian drivers have a phone glued to their ear the whole time, pausing their conversation only briefly to shout at someone tailgating them.

True, there are feeble attempts to tackle road rage. One day a year is Road Politeness Day. Most people ignore it. In any case, it's usually around Easter, when the French go unusually mad behind the wheel as they get stuck in holiday traffic jams. So until someone can come up with tougher measures than that, I'll be dodging Parisian drivers especially the ones in the cute little cars.