The age-old question of which car brand attracts the worst drivers has been debated around pub tables and water coolers for years.
From middle-lane hogging, undertaking or speeding, certain cars have picked up a reputation for some less than egregious driving.
Many German car brands often get brought up in the debate, with Audi drivers often getting thrown under the bus for pulling some dangerous tricks.
But while these manoeuvres can be dangerous, it’s also the little things that can show the signs of a bad driver, perhaps at the top of that list is failing to indicate.
While “mirror, signal, manoeuvre” may be drilled into many of our brains from our days with a learner plate on, new data has revealed exactly which car brand has forgotten the important middle step.
The research by DiscoverCars.com went to six different junctions to count nearly 1,500 cars, breaking each car down by brand and seeing who was sloppy enough not to indicate.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, at the top of the list was BMW. The German manufacturer has long had a reputation for some dodgy driving, and that seems to have been proved once again, with 19.3% of the motorists caught behind the wheel driving the brand.
In a shocking revelation, the data revealed that BMW drivers were in fact three times less likely to indicate than drivers of the 10th placed Peugeot. In second place and keeping to the same stereotype for German-made cars is Mercedes-Benz, with a whopping 14.7% not using their indicators.
Completing the podium of shame, and moving to France is Renault driver, with a history in rally, perhaps their driver forgot they are instead going around a roundabout in Milton Keynes and failing to indicate 14.5% of the time.
Once again heading back to Germany, Audi was only a few percentage points behind, with 12.7% failing to indicate, with Vauxhall rounding out the top five with 12.7% failing to signal.
Rounding out the rest of the list, VW came in sixth, surprisingly followed by Volvo, Toyota, Honda and Peugeot with just 6.7% failing to signal.
Speaking about the findings, motoring expert Aleksandrs Buraks said: “Drivers of luxury cars already have a bad rep in terms of what they’re like to share the roads with – and our experiment found that BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi were all in the top five cars most likely to be spotted not indicating correctly.
“Nearly one in five BMWs our team observed didn’t signal when they should have. Within our top ten car brands in the study, models made by Volvo, Toyota, Honda and Peugeot were all seen failing to use their indicators less than 8% of the time, a noticeably smaller percentage.
“However, even a tiny number of people not signalling can majorly disrupt traffic and make driving much more confusing and stressful than it needs to be.”
