Women are on average 12 per cent angrier than men while behind the wheel of a car according to Hyundai Motor UK, which recently commissioned a study of 1,000 UK drivers to determine how sound, sight, smell, touch and taste provoke emotional responses in different driving scenarios.

Participants were observed to measure how they responded to being undertaken, shouted or beeped at, how they dealt with a back-seat driver, and how the reacted when faced with a road user who failed to indicate.

In all test scenarios, female drivers consistently responded with greater levels of anger than male drivers.

Researcher Patrick Fagan, behavioural psychologist from Goldsmiths University London, said: “Psychologically, women score higher than men on emotional and verbal intelligence, and on the personality trait of neuroticism.