Geoff Hill sees the south as a haven for polite helpfulness, and lambasts Northern primness . . . but down south Ian Noctor finds drivers ill-trained, incompetent and downright dangerous.
Here's a message for the driver of a large Bedford truck I had the misfortune to end up behind last week. You should be taken out and given a good thrashing with a wet lettuce.
Tell me, did you think once to look in your rear-view mirror as you trundled along the road between Randalstown and Portglenone on Saturday morning, reaching speeds from 25 mph to the giddy heights of 40 mph?
If you had, you'd have seen a queue of about 20 cars, whose drivers normally like to proceed a little faster, and who have better things to do than breathe in your fumes. These drivers were also taking note of the irony that on every straight stretch you would accelerate just enough to stop the person behind you overtaking and not crashing into the car which had invariably appeared on the horizon coming in the opposite direction.
It's a funny thing about slow drivers in Northern Ireland. Invariably men wearing flat caps or grannies whose hair turned white just after the war, they never dream of pulling over and letting those who like to motor on a bit overtake.
It's a different story down south, where at the sight of a distant speck in the rear view mirror, the driver of anything less than a Ferrari will immediately fling the car into the nearest field to let you pass.
I was discussing this with Victor who knew of a Coleraine farmer who had courteously pulled over and driven along the hard shoulder to let a queue of cars pass, and been immediately booked by a zealous member of the constabulary as a result.
Whoever that constable was, he deserves a good dose of wet lettuce as well. He should take a break on the continent where, in several countries, it's the law that, if you have a line of five or more vehicles behind you, you must pull over and let them pass. Very sensible - the sooner it's done here the better.
I don't know quite what it is about Northern Ireland drivers. You might say that the driver of a Bedford truck, a tractor, or the ancient Peugeot diesel, has an excuse in that he or she can't go any faster.
However, drivers of faster cars in the North do the same. Not many know this, but Ulster has more new BMWs per capita than anywhere else outside western Germany.
Furthermore, being a fully-paid member of the Calvinist Work Ethic, your average Ulsterman is likely to be found every Sunday out washing and polishing his car, vacuuming the Labrador hairs from the back seat, then cleaning the alloy wheels with his wife's toothbrush.
As a result, once they get out on the road, they drive far enough out from the ditch to avoid splashing the mud on the road's edge.
How different things are down south: not only will people pull over to let you pass, but they will then insist that you pull over so they can make sure you're going the right way. I remember once ending up completely lost in west Cork, and stopping at a shop to ask for directions. "Well, that's easy, so," said the counter assistant, a large girl in a small blouse.
"You go straight down that road, then take a right and a left and a left and a right and the second left then another right, so you do, and you can't miss it."
I got back into the car and drove off slowly, trying to remember what the middle one was. After a hundred yards a rusty Toyota Corolla pulled up and the driver got out.
"Follow me, I'm nearly going the same way myself," he said, and had driven off down the road again before I realised he was one of the customers from the shop.
He led us for 10 miles through a maze of lanes we would have had no hope of negotiating ourselves, then shook our hands and drove off. A similar thing has happened several times since, usually because we're driving so slowly looking at the scenery that people ask us if we're lost. "Absolutely. Isn't it great?" I always say.
Nowadays, though, when we go on holiday down south, we bring with us a notice to hang from the back of the car saying "Rubbernecking Tourists: Please Pass".
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm just popping out to the wet lettuce shop just in case I come across that Bedford truck again tomorrow.
Sharing road space with drivers from the North is a joy, writes Ian Noctor. There's no two ways about it. They are streets ahead of the majority of lunatics behind wheels here in the Republic. The fact that their roads are superior to ours obviously plays a part, but it goes much deeper than that.
In the Republic we like to think of ourselves as being much more law-abiding than our Northern brethren, not caught up in the Troubles. Who are we fooling? You see, there's such a thing as an "Irish law" - a law that's been passed but is never really intended to be enforced.
Our driving licence system is a good example. In most jurisdictions, the North included, to be in charge of a mechanically-propelled vehicle, you have to prove your competence by passing a driving test.
Not in the Republic. Most people in their 50s and older never sat a driving test. Until recently it was possible, at the age of 17, to walk into your local motor taxation office and buy a driving licence which entitled you to drive whatever car you or you family could afford. If you did sit your test and failed, no problem. All you had to do was promise to resit it within a year or two and off you went again. In theory this has all changed this year.
This laissez-faire attitude leads to bad drivers. The driving test exists for a reason. It teaches road manners, observation awareness and the rules of the road among other skills.
Northern drivers are not allowed on the road by themselves until they've passed a test, and even then they undergo a probationary period - where they carry "R" or restricted plates.
The lack of formal training amongst Southern drivers is as obvious as the potholes on a Cavan back road. Drivers down south don't have a clue. Let's take a few examples. The National Roads Authority (NRA) has spent billions upgrading roads in the 26 counties and one of the upshots is the appearance, if you're lucky, of "overtaking" lanes. Note the name. Neither "fast lanes" or "outside lanes", but "overtaking" lanes.
The key to their correct use lies in the nomenclature. But, when the typical lemming-like southern drivers happen upon these lanes, do they move into the left-hand lane? Not even if it were paved in gold and offered free petrol tokens for drivers.
If you've ever driven on our few scraps of motorway, you'll know the inside lane may as well not exist. It's always empty. The outside lane is chock full. Why? Because we have turned into a nation of ill-mannered pushy unskilled tailgaters.
To the Southern driver, the overtaking lane is the place to be - at any speed. It keeps you in front, defending your position on the road. And it means that, unlike on a normal road, there's no room for overtaking on the outside unless those behind fancy taking to the grass reservation. Then speed is no longer a factor.
So, those of us with an aim to get through our journey in less than three days are forced to overtake on the inside lane, or undertake, as it has come to be known with good reason.
Of course, another source of Northerners' superior driving habits may be that they've had proper tarmacadamed, pothole-free, correctly cambered roads.
They've also had years to practise overtaking on motorways, and then moving back in to the inside lane. Observe them in their natural habitat, the M1 outside Belfast. It's pure choreography, a joy to behold.
Northern driving skills were also given time to develop out of the over-exuberant gaze of the local constabulary. There were areas in the North where the police and British army could only venture by helicopter. This meant free reifor the boy racer. All he had to do was find a stretch of road and let go. Without condoning road racing, there must be a correlation between this and the fact that most of the motoring talent thisisland has produced in the last 20 years has come out of Northern Ireland.
Finally, there's the love affair the North has had with its cars for generations. Polishing the chariot of a Sunday morning is one of the few sacraments on which Sammy and Seamus agree. They take care never to put their charges into an uncompromising position which could lead to damage or injury. In the South all we want to do is get there first.