A NEW SURVEY has revealed that ten per cent of drivers in Ireland have taken to the road without a seatbelt in the past year.

The poll, commissioned by Liberty Insurance also showed that over half of all drivers have broken the speed limit in the last year with men more likely to do so than women.

The research found that the top three bad habits drivers have admitted to are going over the speed limit (56 per cent), forgetting to dim lights when meeting on-coming cars (31 per cent) and driving too close to the car in front (22 per cent).

Both men and women are guilty of taking their eyes off the road with almost one in five drivers admitting to eating, shaving, applying makeup and brushing their hair while driving, though hopefully not all at once.

The research also showed that drivers are not always so up front about their behaviour as the 4 per cent who admitted to forcing someone to pull in to allow an overtake is at odds with over half of drivers who say they’ve experienced this.

Two-thirds of drivers have experienced another driver not using their indicator while overtaking but only 15 per cent admitted to it.

Perhaps most worryingly, only 1 per cent of people in the survey admitted to driving without a seatbelt while children were in the car while almost 2 in 5 drivers have said they observed this in the past year.

The research, conducted by Millward Brown, also saw men admit to suffering more from frustration on the road with 24 per cent unnecessarily beeping the horn compared to 16 per cent of women, while a quarter of women admit to having taken more than three turns when trying to park compared to 17 per cent of men.

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