MOTORISTS IN Fife and Tayside who spot a Lexus driver wearing a chef’s hat should drive in the opposite direction.

Chances are that the driver is a raging chef from Oldham and he is about to bend someone else’s motor.

On the other hand, you are unlikely to be cut up by a nice Volvo-driving Dundee secretary, one of the few deemed by a major insurance company to be the safest in the land.

Motor insurer Diamond has combed its files to compose an identikit of the worst and best drivers, their occupations and the types of cars they drive in an attempt to quantify who are the best and worst risks as far as they are concerned.

Top of the cops are bobbies driving Skodas in Inverness, since their claims have been few and far between. Two of the top female spots belong to Tayside, with teaching assistants and secretaries from Dundee and Perth, timid creatures when they are behind the wheels of a Volvo or a Smart car.

Scotland was established as having the five safest locations— Inverness, Perth, Dumfries, Dundee and Aberdeen, while the calamity capital is the north west of England.

Especially if the driver is a chef from Oldham on his way home after escaping the heat of the kitchen while still blowing his stack.

Worst women behind the wheel are, apparently, hairdressers from Manchester driving BMWs, with Bolton and Blackpool also places to avoid, since women in MG sports cars and Hondas have fender benders with more regularity than anywhere else.

Still in north-west England, labourers and warehousemen driving a Lotus or MG in Blackburn or Manchester should also be given a wide berth.

A spokesman for Diamond said that the north-west was a “hotbed” for prangs, with 18% more likely to have an accident.