It's counter-intuitive but it seems the safer we try to make cars and roads the worse we drive - making driving all the more dangerous.

This according to Tom Vanderbilt in his book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) which was recently reviewed in one of my favorite magazines - The Week.

Vanderbilt writes that providing motorists with sophisticated equipment onboard and clearly marked roads that are well designed and engineered apparently makes us drive worse because we don't have to think about what we are doing.

In short, "... the safer we feel, the worse we drive."

The Week cites a Dutch engineer who removed "all the speed limits from the village of Oudehaske and made it hard to tell where the kerb started and the road ended; drivers immediately drove more slowly and considerately."

"By contrast, straight motorways, thick white guiding lines and big safe cars encourage us to drive carelessly, even to fall asleep."

The issue is hardly academic. As salon.com's Kevin Burger points out in a recent interview with Vanderbilt, "Death on the highway is the most repressed nightmare in American life. The number of people killed on our roads is like Sept. 11 happening 13 times every year. We seldom discuss the carnage because we don't dare puncture the illusion of safety."

It's like that finding in Britain a few years back that building new roads to alleviate congestion actually attracted more cars and thus more congestion.

But maybe it's all a metaphor for life: The more you dig to get yourself out, the bigger the hole gets.

- Peter C.T. Elsworth