A new study by a team of psychologists from Florida has revealed an alarming aspect to the modern Ms when she gets behind the wheel.  And before you run away with the not improbable notion that interviewing four hundred female twenty-somethings and late teens in America and Japan might have had an ulterior motive, these girls are something else.  They could, it seems, frighten the crap out of anyone.

“We need to recognise that male drivers aren’t necessarily the biggest threat on the road,” says John Houston (no, not the Late Great - one of the psychologists), “Women don’t seem to be following the rules any more. They may have been more cautious drivers in the past, but that no longer holds. We were very surprised by our findings.”

The study is due to be published shortly in the American scientific press.  Its subjects revealed high levels of hostility, sensation seeking, susceptibility to boredom, and competitiveness.  American women were particularly hostile.  “I’m in a hurry. Move it or lose it,” was the typical attitude.

How nice, then, it would be to be able to record that the, of course, entirely ladylike lady drivers of Britain are retaining their essential qualities.  But apparently not.  As yesterdays Times noted ...

The latest available Home Office statistics show British women account for an increasing share of nearly all types of traffic conviction — especially speeding. In six years from 1996 to 2002 the proportion of women convicted for speeding rose by more than half to 17% of the national total of 124,600. An increased proportion of women were also convicted for drink-driving, driving without insurance, neglect of traffic signs and pedestrian rights, as well as parking offences.

There is, though, one silver lining for Brit traditionalists.

Andrew Howard, the head of road safety at the AA Motoring Trust, says speed cameras are catching fast women who previously got away with it.

“A greater percentage of the people being caught by cameras are women, because cameras are indiscriminate,” he says. “Women can’t flutter their eyelashes at a speed camera. It used to be that policemen would pull over only the worst offenders, who all tended to be men. Now, if you go at 36mph the camera will get you.”

Let all males hope that these wise words will put the fair sex off non-household electronic gadgetry for all time.