The UK city home to the worst drivers - and it's not London

When it comes to driving offences, two likely categories emerge including inconsiderate or careless driving and dangerous driving.

Interestingly, research reveals a big reason for poor driving is peer pressure which encourages offences while driving as many are trying to show off to their passengers.

Road rage is another major issue found among many UK drivers as a whopping four in five UK drivers run the risk of being fined due to their behaviour during road rage according to Compare The Market.

But who are the worst drivers in the UK and which region produces the most reckless motorists?

A nationwide study delved further into this, pinpointing which area is mostly likely to see a crash and which region produces the worst drivers.

New research from Isuzu UK and conducted by Perspectus Global during March 2024 found that Cardiff are among some of the worst drivers in the UK.

The study found the Welsh topped the poll for being the most reckless behind the wheel and had a 35 per cent likelihood of being involved in a crash.

This included Wales being the most likely to have had a near fatal car crash and most likely to have been fined for speeding

A close second went to the capital city, London, with a score of 33 per cent, followed by Liverpool (31 per cent).

When it came to the region with the safest drivers in the UK, Nottingham came out on top with only a 2 per cent likelihood of reckless driving compared to the national average of 15 per cent.

According to the poll, the 10 most dangerous areas for producing the worst drivers included:

• Cardiff – 35 per cent
• London – 33 per cent
• Liverpool – 31 per cent
• Plymouth – 15 per cent
• Leeds – 12 per cent
• Birmingham – 9 per cent
• Leicester – 9 per cent
• Oxford – 9 per cent
• Sheffield – 8 per cent
• Brighton – 7 per cent

It would seem that reckless driving also comes with a host of excuses as the poll found the top ones including that there were too many cars on the road (36 per cent), not enough parking spaces (24 per cent) and the roads being too small (17 per cent).

Other excuses for poor driving worth noting included blaming their car (12 per cent) and not having forward collision warning technology being an issue (11 per cent).

Six per cent simply stated that they hated their car which owed to their poor driving with three per cent stating their reversing cameras weren’t good enough which owed to their reckless driving.

The poll also found that 9 per cent of UK drivers were so bad that family and friends refused to be in the same vehicle as them.

Road rage inevitably also came up in the poll with more than half (59 per cent) of UK drivers admitting they have received verbal abuse or rude gestures from other motorists with Millenials (67 per cent) and Gen Z (67 per cent) most likely to be on the receiving end of such abuse.

Even more worrying was seven per cent of drivers confessed to occasionally forgetting to look out for pedestrians when on roads and 10 per cent always forgetting to be on the lookout for motorcyclists and cyclists.

Around 11 per cent admitted to having no clue how to drive a manual car and 32 per cent saying if they had a dream vehicle, featuring on the mod-cons, would help improve their driving.

“With over 50 million drivers in Great Britain, it is worrying to think that as many as 7.5 million consider themselves bad drivers,” said George Wallis, Head of Marketing at Isuzu UK.

He continued: “It’s clear from the research that UK motorists face many challenges on all journeys, from smaller roads, tight parking bays and even their own vehicle.”

Regardless of the excuses, it's clear many UK drivers face a number of challenges with 61 per cent believing they’d unlikely pass their driving test if they had to do it again with the elderly displaying these feelings more.