Parking is driving motorists mad (From Echo)

Parking is driving motorists mad

2:45pm Monday 8th June 2009 in Cars

ALMOST 70 per cent of motorists hate driving in their home town according to new research.

They detest the jams, the lack of parking and the one-way systems, a survey by the More Than insurance company found.

Motorists are most annoyed by lorries in East Anglia and south-west England, while other areas plagued by heavy goods vehicles include Dunstable in Bedfordshire and Salisbury in Wiltshire.

Despite the lorries, East Anglia has the happiest motorists, while accidents and vandalism are at their rarest in south-west England.

Slowest city traffic is to be found in London with southern England also congested as well as Bristol. North-East England has the clearest roads.

Oxford and Cambridge have some of the worst parking provision, Birmingham is bad for crashes, and theft from cars is worst in Northern Ireland, the poll of 1,536 drivers discovered.

Yorkshire drivers loathe one-way systems the most, with Leeds, Leicester and East Grinstead in West Sussex having some of the most-hated systems.

The most pleasant drives in the country were cited as the A169 across the North Yorkshire Moors; the A4086 in Wales from Caernarfon to Beddgelert in Snowdonia, and the A466 Chepstow to Monmouth along the Wye Valley.

More Than’s Pete Markey said: “It’s not just the big cities which are blighted by poor planning, traffic hotspots and a lack of parking spaces. It’s an issue winding up motorists everywhere.”