BMW, Subaru and Porsche drivers ‘more likely to cause a crash’, study finds

A BMW car, one of the brands identified in the study as likely to pose a crash risk. The carmaker said it took ‘a great deal of care in meeting the standards set by the Advertising Standards Authority’. Photograph: Advertising Standards Authority/PA

What came first, the boy racer or the sports car? Academics have called for further research into the marketing of cars after analysis of UK accident data suggested that drivers of certain brands are more likely than others to cause a crash.

A study of more than 400,000 UK road accidents found that when “risky or aggressive manoeuvres” played a part in collisions, there was a significant statistical difference in driver culpability across different brands.