Are you one of the thousands of motorists who drive daily to work in Dublin, Cork, Galway, or Limerick, cursing in turn the absence of a decent public transport system, the soaring fuel prices and that monster with the go-faster stripes that just cuts in when clearly you had the right of way?
As you swear, you probably can't help but notice all the other single-occupant cars fighting for space on every roundabout or T-junction that crosses your angry path. Suddenly an all-American vision springs to mind.
Car-pooling. And you wish there was a way to set up such a system in your area without the need to call yourself Brad or Chuck and arrange cook-outs for the neighbourhood.
Until recently this would have been impossible. But a new website, dublintraffic.ie, which enables commuters to establish contact with others from their own community with a view to setting up car pools, could change things. And it's free.
The site is the brainchild of Peter Seymour, a Kilkenny-based consulting engineer, who suffered the long commute between Kilkenny and Dublin for two years. It works by allowing users to post journey and contact details on bulletin boards, of which there are 160, covering all the Dublin suburbs and outlying towns and villages within commuting distance of the city.
There is a bulletin board for every community in Meath, Kildare, Wicklow, Louth, Carlow and Dublin, where the journey and contact details of other commuters from each town or neighbourhood can be posted and viewed. Some other counties have partial coverage on the site.
The only information required for registration is the name of your town or suburb, your Dublin destination, your first name and a work contact phone number or e-mail. Once entered, this information is immediately posted onto the bulletin board for your area, so other commuters can see who's going where, and when.
"As other commuters browse the bulletin boards, you would then be contacted by another commuter who feels that there may be a match, and you can begin to discuss possible car-pooling arrangements," Seymour explains. "The beauty of the system is that it maintains anonymity - no one knows who you are, except for a first name and a work contact phone or e-mail."
The site also provides guidelines on how to evaluate the legitimacy of your potential car-pooling partners and makes it simple to delete yourself from the database should you decide the solo commute suits you better.
The website was launched in July by the Minister for Public Enterprise, Mary O'Rourke at a Dublin Chamber of Commerce meeting. Its database is currently building up a critical mass of subscribers from which car pools can be formed.
According to Seymour, early trends indicate that there is an even split between male and female subscribers to the service and plans are underway to involve the Society of Irish Motor Industries in a campaign to promote the service throughout the autumn.
"Naturally enough, politicians, business leaders and others pay a lot of lip-service to encouraging and facilitating car-pooling as one element of the solution to ameliorate Dublin's traffic chaos. With the introduction of this site, the mechanism now exists for commuters to set up car pools, simply and easily, and at no cost," Seymour says.
It remains to be seen, however, if the decision makers put in place a series of measures to encourage commuters to carpool before the next fuel crisis, bus strike or gridlock chokes Capital City.
Peter Seymour, a freelance consulting engineer, can be contacted at pseymour@iol.ie