Road tribes

Australia's motoring culture has evolved in much the same way as our native fauna. For more than a century, thousands of kilometres away from anywhere, the Australian automotive experience has developed into a quirky phenomenon unlike anywhere else in the world.

And there is nowhere else like Sydney, where every day motorists are neatly pigeon-holed into specific tribes. Do you belong to any of these tribes identified by our resident motoring enthusiast WARREN BROWN?

Where? Authoritative driver who can describe to you some of the world's great shortcuts from Belarus to Baluchistan but has little idea of the whereabouts of Sydney Town Hall.

In London, cab drivers have "The Knowledge" - in Sydney they have the Navman. All taxi drivers are unnervingly comfortable with solving the Gillard government's problems while sitting on a seat cover comprised of wooden beads as big as golf balls.

In the deluxe variety of taxi you can inhale the exotic cherry aroma of an Ambi-Pur air freshener. Heaven.

B-DOUBLE

Road Train Lite. Someone in government thought it was okay to spice up the traffic by allowing something with 26 wheels, weighing 30 tonnes and capable of travelling 110km/h to mingle with the rest of us. The best place to sit back and watch your life flash before your eyes is in the M5 tunnel, somewhere between Kenworth and Mack.

PUBLIC BUS

Ear-splittingly loud, alarmingly quick off the mark, these gargantuan people-movers are bright blue blood clots on the CBD's arteries. Amazingly, they can simultaneously bring traffic to a standstill yet still attain phenomenal speeds. All government buses are piloted by Michael Schumacher.

M5 RESIDENT

This motorist's miserable existence is played out in purgatory somewhere between The River Rd turnoff and King Georges Rd where daily, the best parts of their lives are whittled away in gridlock. On the bright side, it's one of the few places you can relax and read the complete works of Tolstoy or James Joyce in one sitting.

HIGHWAY PATROL

If the road was an ocean and cars were fish, then the Highway Patrol Commodore is the great white shark lurking out there somewhere, ready to roll its eyes back and attack. Guaranteed to strike terror into any motorist on the move. As with sharks, it's the one you don't see you need to worry about.

SCHOOL MUM

Where Volvo station wagons were once the cattle truck of choice, schoolkids are now compressed into more street-cred SUVs and CRVs and other vehicles denoted only by a combination of three letters.

DOOF DOOF

Decibels over horsepower. The hopeful adolescent attention-seeker out to win over the opposite sex by making their ears bleed. The value of the car is inversely proportional to the cost of the sound system. Even though the owner has a season pass for Summernats, in reality he knows his way around JB Hi Fi a lot better than Supercheap Auto. What? Did you say something? I can't hear you.

THE TEXTER

It's an extraordinary feat of 21st century human achievement to be able to text while manoeuvring a ton of rolling metal through Sydney's unpredictable traffic without killing someone. All it takes is one eye on the road, one eye on your iPhone and one eye on the lookout for a good lawyer when the coppers bust you in the act.

MONSTER 4WD

More insectivorous than automotive, these are one of the few species of modern cars owners can "fiddle with".

The greater the suspension, the greater the wheels, the greater the tyres, the greater the pain in the bum they are to everyone else on the road. Still, you never know when you need to drive over a boulder on Sydney's roads.

CLOVER MOORE CYCLIST

Extremely rare but consistently arrogant when found.

Blind to children, obnoxious to pedestrians, foulmouthed to motorists - probably a result of carrying an enormous chip on the shoulder while pedalling along the putt-putt golf-style thoroughfare that is the cycleway.

There are exceptions of course, but belligerence is de rigeur for the inner-city pedaller.

TRADIE'S VAN

Commanded by self-employed millionaire gyprockers/ housepainters/plumbers/chippies/sparkies, all tradie's vans originate solely from the Sutherland Shire. Adorned with mysterious over-length PVC tubing that could contain anything from curtain rods to a rocket launcher.

Inside is a cordless worksite Makita radio with the tuning dial Araldited to Jonesy and Amanda.