I was driving into work the other day and coming towards me was a bloke in a large works van.

It’s a busy route, passing two schools in a very short space of time. Not too long ago, a young girl ended up in a London hospital after being hit by a car, flying into the air onto the opposite side of the road and going under the wheels of a bus. Thankfully, she survived.

There are bus stops, pedestrian crossings and plenty of side roads with other vehicles trying to join the throng, so plenty to keep you alert.

So what was this man doing?

Looking down at the cigarette he was rolling, licking the seal tight, with both hands off the steering wheel.

In real time, it was only a second or two, but enough to have ended in tragedy.

Had a child, as children sometimes do, been having a laugh and a jostle with their mates at the edge of the pavement and inadvertently stepped out into the road, what would have happened?

The van driver may well have swerved and avoided him, but then he may have ended up hitting a vehicle coming in the other direction. Me.

We all lose concentration briefly, and accidents happen, but I genuinely don’t understand why people insist on doing things other than driving when they are behind the wheel of what is, let’s face it, a killing machine.

Safety has improved vastly over the years, but that does not make humans invincible. State-of-the-art braking systems may save lives, but that doesn’t allow you to tailgate the vehicle in front to bully them out of the way on the motorway, just because you want to go faster than the speed limit (and it is a speed limit, folks, not a speed target). Back off, give yourself time and room to brake (and live) if you need to, let them pull in after they’ve overtaken other vehicles and then continue on your way.

New laws may have come in with harsher punishments for drivers caught using phones at the wheel, and it will be interesting to see the first six months’ figures, but I fear it won’t be any more a deterrent than the previous rules. If you didn’t realise how dangerous it was a few months ago, are tougher rules going to make you toe the line?

And it isn’t just the professional drivers who are the problem. Another drive into work another day took me past the same schools, and in a very short space of time three different parents caused chaos while trying to drop their children off as close to the gates as possible.

They all drove past the long, empty layby that they could have pulled into because it would have meant their children walking about 200 yards.

Instead, one of them brought rush-hour traffic to a standstill and took several attempts to squeeze their vehicle into an impossibly small space, another pulled into the entrance of the school stopping the car behind it from accessing the same road, and again bringing traffic to a standstill.

The third swung into another entrance but then swung the front of their car so far out, they shot back onto the main carriageway and almost hit me.

When I sounded my horn to warn them, I was met with a selection of hand gestures.

People are, in general, I find, good, kind, thoughtful and considerate, and this is the world I love to live in.

But there is a growing expectation these days by some that the rest of the world will just work around them.

And I don’t like it.