Heather du Plessis-Allan: It's time to stop playing cop

Sol Norton posted a video to Facebook, showing a tourist driver crossing the centre line near Franz Josef.

I wanted to see why the woman needed to snatch the tourist's keys. I heard she'd filmed the visitor driving on the wrong side of the road. I heard it was a shocker.

I found the video online. I clicked the link. The woman's friend was filming from inside their car, following the tourist's vehicle. The car ahead came to a corner. It braked. It turned the corner but started drifting to the right. Over the centre line it went. It must've seen the car coming the other way because suddenly it was back in its lane. It managed to stay there a while, but then it started happening again. Over the line the car went, along came another car in the other direction, back into its own lane the car went.

There the video ended. I felt underwhelmed. That display hardly seemed reason to snatch the keys from the driver. It was hardly the forgetting-what-lane-I-should-be-in that I'd imagined.

New Zealand, we need to have a little chat. I'm not sure it should be up to you to steal visitors' keys. Especially if you think that previous example warranted your intervention.

It wasn't much worse than the corner-cutting I am guilty of.

And actually, if you've ever driven overseas, you'd know how hard it can be to stay in the centre of your lane. Your eyes are used to lining themselves up a little more to one side of your lane, and before you know it, you're straying over too far, hitting the rumble strips.

This driver didn't seem reckless. If anything, the driver was being careful. The car's brake lights were lighting up before every corner. Hardly a speed demon.

I'm adopting my best school ma'am tone for this. New Zealand, it's time to stop playing policeman on the roads. You're not vigilantes. You're packing tanties. What you're pretending is a public service, is really just road rage.

And honestly, you're making me just a little embarrassed. I read some stuff people are saying about us because of the way you're carrying on. No one's calling you a hero. They're just giving us gyp for being jerks behind the wheel.

Here's a sample from a UK paper: "Bar none, New Zealanders are the worse [sic] drivers I have ever encountered." A bit dramatic, I'll admit, but you get the gist. The same person carries on to say we are "the most impatient road users it would ever be possible to meet, tailgating everything and everyone all the time". Sounds just a little like us doesn't it?

How about we deal with our own maniac drivers before we start schooling visitors? If you trawl this week's headlines you'll find plenty of examples of our own terrible driving.

There was the allegedly stolen car that fled police on Auckland's motorway. No one grabbed those car keys. There was the Ashburton guy who police say drove so fast his passenger asked to be let out. He clocked 171 km/h, they said. And it's slightly ironic that his petrified passenger was a tourist.

There I was self-harming my national pride by actively searching out negative comments when I found the clincher.

Someone - not really succinct enough to be quoted - virtually compared us to THOSE kinds of tourist destinations your friends warn you about. The ones where you're told never to have a crash because corrupt officials or crazy locals will fleece you for all you're worth or throw you in a jail forever for the tiniest of prangs.

Is that how bad we're behaving, guys? Is that the warning we want in our country's Lonely Planet entry?

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