White van males worst for tailgating

30/6/14

By Peter Woodman

Motorists need to beware of the White Van Man on their tail, according to a survey of thousands of accidents.

Van drivers appeared 47% more most likely to be involved in a crash when they had been following other drivers too closely, the survey by AXA Enterprise Insurance coverage located.

The survey also found van drivers have been significantly far more likely than other drivers to crash whilst reversing, undertaking a U-turn and changing lanes, while they were more liable than other road users to get tired or distracted.

But the survey also showed that van drivers had been significantly less most likely to cause crashes at roundabouts, in towns and cities and whilst overtaking.

Van drivers safer than average

They had been also observed to be far more confident drivers who have been significantly less prone to drink-driving and speeding than other road customers.

While van drivers had been identified to be safer than the typical driver in most UK regions, the study of more than 1.3 million police crash reports from 2008 to 2012 showed they had been considerably far more likely than others to be involved in accidents in London and in the north east of England.

They were also far more probably to be prone to crashes in the West Midlands and the East Midlands, but significantly less most likely than other people to be in an accident in Wales, north west England and south west England.

AXA Company Insurance managing director Darrell Sansom mentioned: “The nation’;s van drivers play a crucial function in our economy.

‘Tailgating intimidates other motorists’;

“Our report shows that in a lot of respects, they are also specialist, confident drivers who come out greater than everybody else on things like speed, drink-driving and handling heavy visitors.

“However we have to raise the red flag on troubles like tiredness and tailgating. We’;re alerting the government authorities to our findings and discussing our recommendations for addressing these troubles.”

A Division for Transport spokesman mentioned: “Speeding and tailgating intimidates other motorists and can trigger accidents that expense lives.

“We take these concerns really seriously and final year we increased the fines for speeding offences and introduced a new fixed penalty offence to make it less complicated for police to target tailgating drivers.”

White van males worst for tailgating