WASHINGTON area has more than 900 cars to the square mile meaning almost three million vehicles. I have just added to those statistics having come through obligatory drugs and alcohol course, and eyesight, legal and driving tests.
After all that the driving licence itself is just the size of a credit card on which it squeezes two colour photographs, your height, weight, address, sex, organ donor or not, and some coded information. It's your main ID over here.
This is a Maryland licence and so the driving test is done on an artificial course and is a lot easier than the Washington DC test where you do it on the crowded streets. I got through the driving part no bother but nearly failed the legal one.
Having an Irish licence was not going to get you off anything. But you can drive a rented car as much as you like on the Irish licence without knowing anything about US rules of the road.
No one seems to fail the three hour drugs and alcohol course which are run privately by the driving schools. I dutifully took notes on all you ever wanted to know about amphetamines, hallucinogenics, and marijuana.
The teenage girl beside me slept through most of it and a Russian woman pretended to understand it all. We all emerged with our certificates proving very little. The most impressive part was the video showing just what happens in an accident.
Anyhow it was all in the 84 page Maryland Driver's Handbook out of which come the 20 questions of your legal test done on a computer terminal. If you miss four you tail.
There are 12 different kinds of lane markings, pages of road signs, charts on blood/alcohol content and a speed limit which varies every couple of hundred yards in parts of Washington. So you had to know your stuff.
For the newly arrived driver, the speed limit can seem a joke. Just like in Ireland no one seems to stick to it. The Maryland handbook says you must observe the posted limits but also that "no person shall drive a motor vehicle at such a slow speed as to impede the normal and reasonable movement of traffic".
Well, the "normal and reasonable" movement of Washington traffic is over the speed limits so you quickly learn not to dawdle.
Washington driving is regarded by experts as some of the worst in the US. The Washington Post has published a long feature in its weekly magazine on "The rise and reign of bad driving in Washington".
This was partly inspired by the horrific crash in April when two cars "duelling" and cutting in on each other on the George Washington Memorial Parkway jumped the median barrier and hit oncoming traffic killing two commuters. One of the duelling drivers was also killed and he was found to have piled up 15 traffic violations in eight years and to be driving on a suspended licence. He had served a jail sentence twice for the same offence.
The other driver has now been charged with two counts of man slaughter after the police investigation lasting almost three months. He had two convictions for speeding.
Mr Jim Russ who works in traffic control says he has done a quarter of a million miles of traffic reporting and "I've come to the conclusion that the drivers here are really awful. People here come from all over the country, all over the world, and bring their bad habits with them.
A driving instructor for 20 years, William Blair, says. "If you go at the speed limit on these major highways, you get run off the road. If you maintain your proper two second following distance, then people cut in front of you it's just dog eat dog. You have to drive defensively to save your own life."
It's not quite as bad as that in my short lived experience. There is still courtesy shown, you will see crazier driving in Dublin, the road system is terrific, the signs tell you everything you need to know and even more.
And of course the gas is so cheap. Get onto Inter State 95 and you have no traffic lights until you get to Florida over one thousand miles away. Can't wait.