According to a new study by UK researchers, women and gay men are likely to be the worst drivers, performing poorly in tasks involving navigation and spatial awareness when compared to heterosexual men.

Psychologists at Queen Mary, University of London, who conducted the study, believe the findings mean driving in a strange environment would be more difficult for gay men and women than for straight male motorists.

Both tend to rely on local landmarks to get around, and are also slower to take in spatial information, Telegraph.co.uk reports.

The computer-based tests were carried out on 140 volunteers, and demonstrated that gay men, straight women and lesbians navigated in a similar way, sharing the same weaknesses.

Dr Rahman said: "Men are good at using distal, or geometrical cues, to decide if they're going north or south, for instance. They have a better basic sense of direction, but they can use local land marks as well.

"Driving in a novel environment which is poor in cues is where these differences are likely to show up most.

"Women are going to take a lot longer to reach their destination, making more errors, taking wrong turns etc. They need more rich local landmarks."

Dr Rahman added that a similar performance between gay and straight men in the radial arms test showed that the divisions between sexual groups were not straightforward.

"Gay people appear to show a 'mosaic' of performance, parts of which are male-like and other parts of which are female-like," he said.

Last update: 01-03-2008 14:32