Note to British readers: Please substitute “right” for “left” and “left” for “right” in the following discussion.

Note to Jamaican readers: This will be very confusing, and you might want to skip it entirely and go hit the beach instead. Irie, mon.

It may be due to my general mood, but driving on the highways around Atlanta has become a twice-daily exercise in frustration for me. We have huge, high-capacity roads here, and in some spots there are eight lanes in each direction, but we still somehow manage to clog them up. My 40-mile drive this morning took two hours, making me late and annoying me more than it should have.

I have been watching other drivers very closely, and I’ve noticed a few things that could really improve traffic flow. They’ll never be implemented, of course, but they would work if we could somehow make them happen.

In Germany, on the Autobahns, they have a strictly enforced law called “Rechtsfahren.” It means, simply, traveling on the right. The left lane(s) are for passing only. If you are caught driving along in the left lane for no good reason, you will find yourself on the receiving end of a very large fine. This is called lane discipline, and it works beautifully there. Of course, in Germany, driving is taken very seriously. Getting a driving license in Germany can cost the equivalent of thousands of dollars, and requires that the new driver pass rigorous tests. Germans give their driving their full attention. German automakers laughed when American markets began to demand cupholders in their automobiles, because no German would dream of sipping a cup of coffee or tea while driving.

Here, driving is what people do while they put on makeup, talk on mobile phones, read the newspaper, gesticulate wildly with both hands at their passengers, do their hair, eat fried chicken, and watch television. Yes, I have personally seen all of the above on Atlanta’s highways. Lane discipline, unfortunately, is largely unheard of.

Every day as I drive to and from my office, I see people puttering along in the far left lane, traveling very slowly, blissfully oblivious to the people whizzing by them on the right. They remain absorbed in their phone calls or are simply too clueless to notice that they’re traffic obstructions.

In Atlanta, we even have some HOV lanes. These High Occupancy Vehicle lanes are designed to allow people who are carpooling or carrying multiple passengers a clearer route around traffic — sort of an award for driving “green.” There’s generally only one such lane, though, and one is only allowed to enter or exit that lane at designated places. Invariably, on any given day that we use the HOV lane, there’ll be one idiot who believes that since he’s carrying a passenger, he can get into that lane and go as slowly as he likes. We can’t pass him until we come to an exit where we’re allowed to exit and re-enter the HOV lane, and he won’t get out of the way either, so we’re stuck. I can’t imagine the thought process that went into obstructing an HOV lane that way, and that’s probably because “thought process” is a gross exaggeration.

Oh, the Georgia lawmakers have tried to fix the problem. In fact, their solution is absolutely brilliant: conflicting laws! The German autobahns don’t have speed limits to deal with, so Rechtsfahren works. Our elected wonders have ignored this difference and effectively implemented Rechtsfahren and speed limits simultaneously. The law is called “slower traffic keep right,” and police are beginning to enforce it. It’s creating a terrible mess.

Suppose I’m on a two-lane highway. Traffic in the right lane is moving at 65 MPH, which is the posted speed limit. It has now become impossible to use the left lane without breaking a law. If I get into the left lane at 65 MPH or less, I’m breaking the “slower traffic keep right” law. If I get over there at 70 MPH, I’m breaking the speed limit. If traffic in the right lane is instead moving at 70 MPH, which is more usual here, and I drive 70 MPH in the left lane, I’m breaking BOTH laws. I’m going too fast and too slow simultaneously. It sounds like Laurel and Hardy. It is, basically.

It’s even worse on the surface streets. I was at a traffic light last night on a major city street. The signal was red, and there were 12 cars in front of me. It took FORTY SECONDS from the time the light turned green until I was able to move. That’s insane. That means that it took each car in the queue an average of over three seconds to begin moving. I should add that we could all clearly visualize the traffic light. Everyone saw it turn green at the same time. The light did not take forty seconds to reach me, the 13th car. Every car in the queue COULD have begun moving at exactly the same time, and we could have taken spacing as we went, but instead we have this ridiculous caterpillar effect. Every driver just sits there until the car in front has moved eight or ten yards, then slowly creeps away. That average, of course, doesn’t count the cell phone guy or the make-up lady who aren’t even looking to see when the light changes — they can’t be bothered with something as mundane as paying attention.

I was cut off this morning by a moron who decided it would be permissible to make a left turn from the right lane, just because he’d forgotten where he was meant to be going, and didn’t feel he could manage the inconvenience of going around the block.

High-speed highways that come to a complete stop every single day are a sign of the apocalypse, I think. I blame the cupholders.