So why side with the weather and manufacture an even more tricky situation for emergency services personnel to go out and take unnecessary risks to save wayward drivers on already raggedy roads?

As driver safety campaigns go, “don’t drive through flood waters” is pretty much up there with “click, clack, front and back” and “arrive alive, under .05”.

Oh, is that it? Do some road users need a twee rhyming jingle in the style of knowing our ABCs before the road safety message is recalled by rote?

Hmmm.

Yes, they’re probably rubbish rhymes, but still not as bad as witless abandon of good sense when all around you the signs say ‘take care out there’.

There is often no way of knowing the depth of water, nor its strength, and whether what was the ground level has been washed away or eroded into car-swallowing sink holes – until it’s too late.

The local SES unit operations commander says many drivers do not grasp the physics of water weight versus the slight grip of rubber tyres, but surely personal safety is not rocket science?

Perhaps it is time to include a mandatory safety element of driver training before vehicle licences can be issued or renewed. Not just a log book of hours at the wheel, but a full skid-pan schooling.

How many drivers can honestly say they know how much tread their tyres have, and how they might perform under aqua- or hydro-planing conditions?

Further, how many drivers, regardless of years of experience, can honestly say they know the correct answer to the question of whether it’s OK to use cruise control settings when driving in wet weather?

The answer is ‘not OK’, by the way. Many owner’s manuals suggest cruise control should not be used in heavy or city traffic, nor on winding, undulating, slippery or unsealed roads. Sound familiar?

In any weather, don’t be a terror of our on-road terrain. But in the wet, if you don’t think then drive, you’re a floody idiot.