LANE-hogging and tailgating are the things that annoy motorway drivers the most, according to a poll.

Motorists also moan about drivers who change lanes without indicating, the survey by Castrol found.

Other pet hates include erratic or unnecessary braking, overtaking on the wrong side (undertaking) and slowing down to look at an accident (rubbernecking).

Although only three per cent said they found undertaking annoying, as many as 33 per cent confessed to doing it themselves, while 25 per cent admitted changing lanes without indicating.

A total of 20 per cent of men and 12 per cent of women owned up to weaving in and out of slow-moving traffic, while 12 per cent of all drivers admitted tailgating and 14 per cent rubbernecking.

Drivers of 4x4s and lorries upset other motorists the most, while 24 per cent of women, but only seven per cent of men felt stressed driving on motorways.

The top ten pet hates are:

1. Lane-hogging/middle lane slow driving

2. Tailgating

3. Changing lanes without indicating

4. Erratic or unnecessary braking

5. Talking on a mobile phone without hands-free

6. Cutting across lanes due to lack of preparation for junction

7. Drivers not letting you join the motorway from the slip road

8. Rubbernecking

9. Undertaking

10. Vehicles weaving in and out of slow-moving traffic

The Echo's alternative list of annoying motoring habits

We have pinpointed some alternative annoying motoring habits which generate everything from a gentle purse of the lips to out-and-out red-faced ranting:

• Drivers who park in a disabled/ parent and child parking bay when they are clearly neither disabled, nor have young children with them.

• Buses who pull out sharply in front of you (fair enough in traffic) but when there is absolutely nothing behind you, you wonder why the driver couldn’t have waited a split second to let you pass.

• People who throw lit cigarettes out of the window. The Daily Echo has reported cases of butts landing in tinder-dry shrub at the side of the road, and even lodged in the bonnet of one lady’s car, setting fire to the vehicle.

Another landed in the back seat of a car, resulting in a fire that made the national press.

• People who get in their cars after filling up at a petrol station and not moving away immediately. What on EARTH are they doing? Can these folk not text/apply make-up/hunt for a Werther’s Original when there isn’t a queue of cars behind them waiting for petrol?

• Stopping at roundabouts when there’s nothing coming.

• Not indicating when entering/exiting a roundabout.

• You do the kind-spirited thing by letting someone out in traffic, and a second car behind them pushes their luck and swans out, too.

• Indicators left on.

• People who speed past a queue of traffic then try to push in when one side of a dual carriageway is closed. It’s not fair on the folk who have been queuing politely for several hundred yards. If you do this, and a vehicle pulls out and blocks the second carriageway in front of you, take the hint that your behaviour is plain rude.

• People parking over the white line in a car park. They should be charged twice.

• Slow drivers who miraculously speed up when you try to overtake them.

• 4x4 drivers on narrow New Forest roads who won’t pull to the side when they meet you, forcing you off the road when THEY have the all-terrain vehicle.

• Anyone who doesn’t slow down for ponies.