The British car insurance company Admiral recently asked more than 3,000 people which U.K. road users they find the most irritating, and older drivers topped the list. As part of the annual Admiral Survey of Motorists, 41 percent of respondents said older drivers “get them hot under the collar,” followed by taxi drivers, 37 percent; cyclists, 36 percent; and van drivers, 34 percent.

All ages besides those 60 and above cited elderly drivers as the most annoying. For seniors, cyclists topped the list, at 35 percent, while only 22 percent said they find other elderly motorists the most irritating.

"It's surprising to see that such a high number of people voted for elderly motorists, which shows they've obviously hit a nerve with the driving public,” Sue Longthorn, Admiral’s managing director, said in statement. “However, as the statistics show, this irritation lessens as people get older and shifts onto cyclists and young male motorists.

“The reason many people find elderly motorists irritating could be because they tend to drive more carefully and are not in such a rush compared to many other road users," Longthorn said. "So many motorists are in a rush these days, they get impatient with anyone they think is slowing them down."

We speculate that those impatient people who find elderly drivers the most irritating are probably the ones whom U.S. drivers find the most irritating.

There are the young guns in their loud tuner cars buzzing around in traffic like pesky mosquitoes, and old guys on even louder Harleys disturbing the peace while playing out their biker fantasies. Almost every metropolitan area has the self-important business execs tailgating other drivers in their luxury sedans, while their blue-collar counterparts in jacked-up pickup trucks typically loom large in the rearview mirrors of others in more rural areas.

While there may be some cultural and regional differences between U.K. and U.S. motorists and between urban and rural drivers in both countries, we also have some common ground.

When Admiral asked motorists what irritates them most about other road users, the highest number of votes went to tailgating, at 74 percent, closely followed by using mobile phones while behind the wheel, 73 percent. We would add to that drivers who cruise in the passing lane with a long trail of cars behind them.