Woman insurance writer vents road rage on her keyboard

As a woman insurance writer I deal a lot in road safety statistics. I read daily traffic accident reports and subsequently write about how female drivers can help themselves get cheap car insurance by driving safely and responsibly.

Today I have been looking at Transport statistics for Great Britain, published in November 2008 by the Department for Transport (DfT). Generally, 2007 fatal and serious injury accident statistics are at their lowest levels for ten years, but as I scanned the table of road accidents and accident rates I noticed one glaring phenomenon. In 2007 there were 462 fatal car accidents on urban A-roads and on rural A-roads the figure jumped to a staggering 1,025.

Now, I understand that the rate of car accidents is lower on urban roads because there is so much more mileage of rural road to urban road, but the fact that so many more people die on rural roads is quite astounding.

I recently drove from North London to the South Coast in the early evening of a mid-January Sunday. It had been bitterly cold in the morning and for the preceding week, so the risk of ice on the road was still a nagging concern. While I was on the M25 driving conditions were OK apart from the odd idiot, but once we left the major route and headed down past Guildford on various single carriageway A-roads, things changed very quickly.

I have to admit, I am not the most natural driver. I drive because I have to and if someone offers me a lift I grab the chance with both hands. But sometimes I just have to drive, and although I have developed route planning strategies par excellence and I rarely drive without a navigator on board (I don't yet fully trust sat-nav equipment), I do occasionally find myself in situations that I would rather avoid.

Night driving is one such of those situations. Dark roads frighten me. Dark rural roads are the stuff of bad dreams and dark unfamiliar rural roads on a cold winter's evening are my own personal purgatory.

Yet, it seems there are drivers out there who would rather intimidate a nervous driver than give them the space to drive safely and my recent experience bears out my thoughts that fatal car crashes on rural roads probably stem from a devastating mix of speed, bravado, familiarity and, conversely, unfamiliarity.

My route home recently took me through some of the darkest, twistiest roads I have ever travelled. I was literally feeling my way safely round the roads. It had been a long day, I was tired and determined to get home in one piece, so I decided to drive fairly conservatively. But what did I get for my attempts at not causing a car crash – I was tail-gated, flashed, honked at; at least one idiot overtook me on a bend and to add insult to injury several drivers forgot to turn down their high beams before rounding a corner and subsequently blinding me momentarily, so that my foot reached for the brake as a matter of caution.

Suddenly the rural road deaths make sense, no matter how busy the M25 is or how fast you can travel as you get swept up in the flow of fast moving traffic, the straightness of the roads and the availability of lanes for safe overtaking make it a much less risky way to drive. In fact, according to the DfT statistics, the rate of accidents on motorways is far lower than on any other type of road in Great Britain.

Drivers on rural roads take-note; if the car in front of you is driving cautiously, they are doing it to stay safe – not to personally annoy you. If you know the road well, back off until you come to a safe overtaking point. Woman insurance buyers get better deals because of their safer driving habits – not all women are safe drivers, but if you should happen upon a cautious driver on a dark and twisty road, let them get home safely by driving with some sense and respect.