What grinds your gears? 2014 Drivers’ road gripes revealed

Britain is a nation of furious drivers who find that just about any minor infraction by other road users is enough to driver them round the bend.

These are the findings of a leading car leasing company which asked 1,500 drivers their opinions and was utter overwhelmed by the response.

Flexed.co.uk said that every driver they spoke to had some sort of pet peeve, from a lack of a ‘thank you’ when they let somebody in, to driving with full beams on the other side of a dual carriageway via seeing dumping cigarette butts out of the car window.

“It seems that our road users were itching to get something off their collective chest,” said Flexed.co.uk spokesperson Mark Hall, “And our survey certainly opened the floodgates. Our researchers tell us they have never heard so much undisguised fury.”

“And the big question we have to ask as a result is this: Is road etiquette dead in the UK?”

The top 20 annoyances about other road users, according to 1,500 British drivers, are:

1. Lack of courtesy ? people who don’t thank you
2. Using a mobile phone while driving
3. Driving too slowly in the middle or fast lane
4. Cyclists running red lights
5. Tractors that don’t pull over to let faster traffic past
6. Bad parking
7. Tail-gating and driving too close
8. Throwing cigarette ends out of the window
9. People who don’t indicate
10. Loud music
11. Not moving up in a traffic jam, letting other cars in
12. Not dipping headlights at night
13. Seeing other drivers picking their nose
14. Drivers who block the road when an emergency vehicle is trying to get through
15. Motorbikes filtering through a traffic jam
16. Wheel spinning
17. Dirty or unreadable licence plates
18. Spitting out of the window
19. People who keep changing lanes in traffic jams
20. Drivers who slow down to look at an accident

The more unusual gripes we heard:

• “Baby on board signs. Do they want a medal or something?”
• “Personalised number plates. I get it, you’ve got money to waste.”
• “Oncoming drivers who flash you to try to tell you something. I’m not psychic.”
• “Fog lights. It’s not foggy. There’s no fog.” (This person is possibly an Alan Partridge fan)
• “I just hate people who turn right. Stop turning right, you’re in my way.”

There’s a serious point to this, Flexed.co.uk says ? it shows the frustrations that British drivers face on our roads every day, which could lead on to more serious incidents if tempers aren’t controlled.

“It’s very easy for us to suggest that drivers take a more relaxed attitude to their motoring when they’ve been stuck in a traffic jam for the best part of an hour,” Flexed.co.uk ‘s Mark Hall says, “but it’s something that hard-put road-users really have to take on board.”

“We need a more live-and-let-live attitude. To steal David Cameron’s words ? we’re all in this together.”