August, 2012 – With Canadians returning from vacation and children going back to school, roads will again become busier giving further rise to driving annoyances and unsafe practices. A survey conducted by Vision Critical Media for InsuranceHotline.com showed some interesting findings around these behaviours pointing to clear differences between gender, region, age, education level and socio-economic status.
“While we see many notable differences between the sorts of driving behaviors that bother other drivers, there are a few universal pet peeves regardless of driver profile, such as texting while driving,” said Tammy Ezer, director of InsuranceHotline.com, in a statement. “What’s encouraging is that almost 90% of drivers in Canada say they have not practiced this very dangerous behaviour within the past three months.”
According to the survey results, other dangerous driving practices such as speeding or entering an intersection on a yellow/red traffic light, are commonplace amongst Ontario drivers, but these bad habits don’t seem to annoy drivers, as they’re not one of the top pet peeves. The top pet peeves were texting while driving and tailgating.
Other interesting observations include:
- On average, according to self-reported data, Ontarians speed more than Canadians (64% versus 56%), and they are the least offended by other speeders;
- Texting while driving is the number one pet peeve in Ontario with almost 50% of respondents indicating that this is among their greatest annoyances while driving. Interestingly, 16% of Ontarians admitted to texting while driving;
- Educated and higher income drivers are more annoyed with slow drivers over drivers who use their phones;
- Young drivers (age 18-34) and males were more likely to have more bad driving habits – they’re almost twice as likely to talk on their phone or text while driving and are least offended by other drivers doing these activities;
- Women and young drivers are doing more self-grooming while driving;
- 25% of women claim they have not done any of these bad driving behaviours in the past three months, as opposed to 14% of men who claim to be innocent of all dozen bad habits in the survey.
“Our survey shows that speeding is the most commonly admitted activity. Interestingly, though not at all surprising and supportive of car insurance rates for the most part, is that Ontarians, men, younger drivers and those with higher income are the most likely to speed,” said Ezer.
