Driving home for Christmas? If you live in London you might well be a menace, according to research published by insurer NFU Mutual. Its survey of 2,000 motorists found that 38 per cent of those from the capital had been in a crash on a country road, compared with 23 per cent of the general population. Cocky Londoners are, according to the survey, the most likely to consider themselves ready to drive on country roads as soon as they gingerly reverse out of the DVLA test centre with their new licence – with some 75 per cent declaring that they were raring to go for a spin down some country lanes.

Since moving from London to the country, the most dangerous drivers I know are those that live here

Really, they should know better. The numbers have long backed up that country roads are far more dangerous than their city counterparts. An analysis of Department for Transport figures shows that 9,887 people were killed on rural roads in the past ten years, two thirds more than the number on urban roads. It will come as a surprise to nobody but crawling down the Wandsworth Bridge Road at 20 mph in heavy traffic (with speed cameras everywhere) in a hatchback is nothing compared to negotiating country lanes, ditches and potholes in the dark all while toggling your full beam lights on and off to avoid blinding oncoming motorists and tractors. Add squabbling children in the backseat into the mix, and you need nothing short of the F1 skills of Nigel Mansell to negotiate the school run and arrive home in one piece.

Still, I find it hard to believe that urban motorists and Londoners back for Christmas pose the greatest risk on country roads. Since moving from London to the country, the most dangerous drivers I know are those that live here. Culturally, this has a lot to do with the entitlement of land ownership: if you’re used to whizzing around your farm in a Land Rover, it may prove rather hard to adjust to sharing the road with others. There’s an element of rackety snobbishness here – ‘I know the road, and I’ll do as I bloody well like’ says one gentrified landowner – but also an element of public sector disintegration. Country roundabouts are generally without traffic lights, meaning that people either dither at them or (more likely) whizz over them at 70 mph without fear of being caught since the countryside is largely unpoliced.

Country drivers of the wartime generation and the boomers were famous of course for their recklessness when it came to drink driving. ‘You weren’t going to drive 50 miles across the county to a dinner party and not drink, were you?’ says one, while another recalls her mother driving home ‘somewhat refreshed’ from a party in deepest Scotland in the 1950s only to be told by a lone police officer that she was driving ‘erotically’ – or ‘erratically’ as it turns out. No fine or, heaven forbid, breathalyzer was ever produced. Public disapproval of drink driving has rightly come a long way since the first campaign in 1964 when drivers were politely reminded that ‘four single whiskeys and the risk of accident can be twice as great’. But as far as I can see, country drivers are still prone to a touch of drink driving. An acquaintance tells of upending his car in a ditch after a Hunt Ball and having to use his farm equipment to retrieve it since the police were nowhere to be seen. Country millennials may have paid attention to the ‘THINK!’ campaigns of the noughties, but there remain a few tweedy types who will risk it.

And then of course, there’s the other bete noire that makes country roads unspeakably dangerous but has nothing to do with reckless Londoners or country drivers: lorries. HGVs rattle down dual carriageways overtaking each other as if at a rally or, worse still, use country lanes as through roads, forcing others to reverse into potholes at a moment’s notice. And yes, blame women in their Range Rovers if you like, but try reversing out of the way of an articulated lorry on a narrow lane with tall hedgerows without one.

And so, if you are driving home for Christmas, please heed the mighty Chris Rea’s verse: ‘Top to toe in tailbacks, Oh, I got red lights all around, But soon there’ll be a freeway, yeah.’ There will be a freeway, and it will no doubt have a bonkers country driver hooning down it.