A number of recent surveys and studies have revealed that BMW drivers are considered to be the most aggressive drivers on the road and this seemed to be confirmed by a survey carried out by Onepoll, to find out if the drivers of certain vehicles sound their horn more than others. It emerged that 53% of  BMW drivers admitted to sounding the horn at least once on every journey, whereas 95% of Nissan drivers said they never use their horn except in an emergency.

BMW contract hire is one of our most popular lines and certainly many company car drivers will often do whatever they can to stretch their budget to a BMW, even if it means contributing to the cost themselves by way of salary sacrifice. Whilst we were always aware that this was partly motivated by prestige, we assumed that those who opted to lease a BMW , did so mainly because they wanted to drive a safe and comfortable car; clearly there is more to it than that.

Whilst the Onepoll survey didn’t go as far as looking at which BMW models were the culprits, we suspect that those who lease a BMW  such as the 1 and 3 Series, are perhaps inclined to drive more aggressively, although of course it difficult to imagine the driver of a BMW M3 not driving aggressively.

There is of course the possibility that those clients who chose a BMW as opposed to say Nissan contract hire , tend to be more competitive and therefore in more of a hurry; there is evidence that competitive individuals are more stressed and tend to rush around more making them more impatient; often this impatience manifests itself behind the wheel.

Our impression is that those who lease a BMW 7 Series are on the whole those who have already arrived and are therefore generally less competitive. Although Jaguar drivers who we would have put in the same category, emerged in the Onepoll survey  to be the second worst offenders, with 45% sounding their horn at least once on every journey.

To confuse matters even further Fiat drivers were the third worst at 43%. Perhaps a lot of Italians drive Fiats; in Italy if you delay the cars behind you by a split second when moving off from the lights, you will be deafened by those behind you sounding their horns.

At the risk of being classed as an aggressive and impatient driver, it’s still worth leasing a BMW; they are wonderful cars.