That’s an exaggeration, of course. As readers often explain, the daily slog is usually short on tragic excitement and long on routine disappointment – the kind of Infuriating Driving Issue of the Day that riled up Jim Palatucci, Karen Jodzio and Tony Craig a week ago.

“Where are the cops?” Jim complained as he stood outside his Paterson apartment building while cars roared down Dey Street without even braking for the stop sign on Paxton Street. “This goes on all day.”

He pointed to another IDIOD — a car parked nearby on narrow Sussex Street. More than a dozen parked vehicles lined both curbs. So, lacking legal curbside space, the driver of this car found ample space on the sidewalk.

“That happens every day, too,” he said. “Pedestrians have enough trouble walking on the sidewalk without having to step into a busy street just to go around a car parked on the sidewalk. But nobody seems to care.”

Karen Jodzio had a similar question.

“Where’s the DOT?” asked the Paramus reader, who frequently uses Route 208 through Fair Lawn, Hawthorne and Wyckoff to visit her daughter.

“They did a great job paving the highway,” she said of the state Department of Transportation, “but can’t they clean the storm drains?”

Sure enough, many drains were clogged. Some of these leafy IDIODs had gone untended long enough to sprout weeds.

“No wonder the road floods when it rains,” Karen said.

For his part, Tony Craig isn’t sure whom to blame for his IDIOD — the borough of Waldwick or Public Service Electric and Gas Co.

“They put up a new utility pole the day after a heavy rain knocked the old pole down in front of my house,” he said, “but they didn’t put back the street light that was there for at least six decades.”

Tony called PSE&G, but so far, no light has replaced the old one on John Dow Avenue. Utility poles can be tricky. Sometimes they’re the jurisdiction of the utility; sometimes they belong to the municipality or county. Tony isn’t familiar with such nuances, but he’s old enough to know the history there.

“This used to be a two-way street, but because it was so narrow, there were too many accidents,” he said, “so 60 years ago they made it one way and they added a street light.”

Now that Eastern Standard Time has returned, he thinks the time is ripe to IDIOD-proof John Dow Avenue again.

“Route 287, too,” he said. “Too many lights are out there.”

Joyce Fern feels the same way about the Garden State Parkway.

“Why aren’t more of New Jersey’s roads lit up?” asked the Pompton Lakes reader.

Twenty years ago, Governor Whitman’s administration tried to save on electricity bills by cutting back on street lights, but subsequent governors insisted that strategy was abandoned long ago. Nevertheless, budgetary demands have reduced maintenance on state roads. Governor Christie’s recent temporary suspension of road construction and maintenance jobs didn’t shine much light on this IDIOD either.

Additional lighting might help answer a question posed by Beth Giordano, whose 2012 Prius sustained substantial damage when “a very large deer” jumped in front of it in Northvale.

“When is the state of New Jersey going to do something about this serious problem?” asked the Waldwick reader, whose car was in the repair shop for three weeks.

The New Jersey Division of Fish, Game and Wildlife has no plans for expanding this year’s deer hunts which continue through early January. But various agencies urge extra caution this time of year.

Compared to the summer months, animal collisions increase by 67 percent during the deer mating season each fall, according to the Farmers Insurance Co. Its research shows nearly half of New Jersey’s comprehensive insurance claims are made during fall when “limited light at dawn and dusk make it more difficult for drivers to spot animals in the road.”

You would think that kind of advice would be too obvious to mention. But judging by a common IDIOD observed by readers like Dawn Eagan Wysocki, the obvious can’t be stated enough.

“Almost every time I drove on the highway at night… I see at least one car with no lights on,” said the Mahwah motorist. “I try to beep the horn or flash my lights to get their attention. Sometimes this works; sometimes it doesn’t.”

Safety features like seat belts, air bags and backup cameras are designed to keep us safe, but the ultimate IDIOD might be the failure to activate obvious features such as headlamps. As readers Rich Pedersen and J.P. Tristani keep suggesting, improper usage is dangerous, too.

And drivers might not be entirely to blame.

Pedersen, an accident re-constructionist, and Tristani, a retired airline pilot, both believe built-in dashboard features, including hands-free telephone displays and global positioning systems, have either become too complex to manage while driving or they’re located too low beneath the windshield to accommodate reaction time when shifting focus to brake safely at 55 mph or more.

“I use a portable GPS mounted on the dashboard and rely more on verbal commands than the display,” said Tristani.

For these two drivers, misusing safety features is the penultimate IDIOD.

Email: cichowski@northjersey.com