WHO are more likely to cause a mini crisis on your forecourt by filling up with the wrong type of fuel, men or women?
Well, according to latest info from the RAC, men are the more likely both to run out of fuel and to put the wrong type of fuel in their cars.
Some 6.6m UK motorists (23%) admit to having run out of fuel at least once. And more men than women say they have fallen foul of an empty tank.
Of those motorists who say they have been left high and dry by losing out when they play petrol or diesel roulette at forecourt pumps, 61% were men and just 39% were women.
Men are also slightly more likely to be repeat offenders – 6% of men say they’ve gaffed more than once compared to 4% of women.
In 2013 the RAC dealt with more than 22,000 out-of-fuel incidents and more than 30,000 misfuelling incidents.
Putting the wrong type of fuel into a tank can cost drivers upwards of £200 to put right (when the cost of flushing out a tank and replacing the lost fuel is taken into account), the motoring organisation said.
And it figures that means misfuelling in the UK will cost roughly £40m a year – some of which will go to the country’s filling stations, of course.
Some 13% of men saying they misfuelled at some point, compared to just 8% of women, meaning the blokes cost themselves around £25m a year.
So are men just much more fuel foolish than the fairer sex?
Not necessarily. It could be down to men driving more miles than women and filling up more often. Both of those things simply give them more opportunities to mess up.
“What is certain,” the RAC says, “is that the number of out-of-fuel incidents increases when fuel prices are rising.”
And it reckons that suggests drivers might be trying to make it to their preferred filling station, probably the one with the lowest prices in the area.
RAC technical director David Bizley said: “Both running out of fuel and misfuelling can be costly mistakes. Running out of fuel can result in motorists being stranded in dangerous places on the road and misfuelling can be very expensive, particularly if a vehicle suffers damage as a result of the wrong fuel being sent around the system.
“Regularly running a vehicle on a minimum of petrol or diesel can cause a number of fuel system problems, but of greater concern from the findings is the fact that more than one in 10 people surveyed say they have run out of fuel on the motorway, putting themselves in a very dangerous situation unnecessarily.”
