Every day I get out of bed and drive to campus. I, like the vast majority of the UA community, am a commuter. We all brave the roads of Tucson to further our education.

To some the most frustrating part of this adventure is finding a parking spot. Well, the leg of the trip I loathe the most is the 10 - 15 minutes from when I pull out of my apartment complex to when I get to campus. Every day it seems I run into another driver who doesn't know how to use a four-way stop, hesitates when changing lanes or holds up the line of cars turning left when they aren't sure if they can get through a hole in traffic large enough for even the UA football team to make it through.

Never in my life could I have expected this kind of bad driving in a place that is designed for cars.

When I first came to school here, I marveled at Tucson streets: "All the roads are straight," I said to myself in complete awe at the planning that must have been involved. Growing up in New England, I assumed that roads everywhere were configured in various shapes that fit the landscape.

One-way streets, rotaries (not the club your grandfather goes to, for those Arizona drivers not familiar with them), narrow windy roads and unlabeled streets are commonplace where I learned to drive.

When it came time to start driving here, I didn't give it a second thought. "If you can drive in Boston, than you can drive anywhere," My father always told me. Believing this, I thought it would be easy to drive in Tucson. Wide, straight as an arrow, three lanes in each direction and, to top it off, the roads are labeled! What could be difficult about that?

Little did I know I was about to venture into a world where driver licenses are distributed in cereal boxes. I soon discovered driving in Tucson is a lot like the running of the bulls; you have no idea what will happen next.

The first time I drove on Grant Road ÷ with its aptly named "suicide lane" ÷ during rush hour, I witnessed a spectacle comparable to a Fox television special titled "When Tucsonans drive!" At the time, I had only been driving in Tucson for a few weeks, and yet I understood the concept, as dumb as it is, better than the dozens of Tucson drivers who either can't read or refuse to accept the fact that they can't make a left turn and are willing to risk their life in order to make their point.

Throw in rain or, god forbid, snow, and it might be best to just stay off the roads or line your car with foam rubber.

Now I know what you're thinking: Tucson drivers aren't that bad. At the very least, they're not as bad as those in Boston, New York, L.A. or a number of other places around the country that have legendary traffic problems and are widely rumored to have "bad" drivers because of it.

Well, in order to dispel this myth, and to prove that I am not crazy, I did some research. I looked up the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to see what they have to offer to this debate.

As it turns out, Arizona had 1,048 traffic fatalities in 2001 ÷ that is 29.52 traffic deaths per 100,000 licensed Arizona drivers.

Those numbers don't look that bad until you compare them with those states that are traditionally considered to have "bad" drivers. I am proud to say Massachusetts only had 477 traffic-related deaths, the fewest of any state. That is 10.34 fatalities per 100,000 licensed drivers. New York and California were not too far behind, either ÷ New York had 14.05, and California had 18.29

So who are the "bad" drivers? What I don't understand is why this is the case. Perhaps the problem is all the straight roads. People in Tucson never have to learn how to really drive because all that is required of them is to hold the wheel straight and make 90-degree turns.

With that in mind, the solution to all our traffic woes is clear. Make Tucson drivers move to another part of the country for a year or so to learn how to drive in the real world like the rest of us.

Jason Poreda is a political science and communication senior. He can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu