Don Your Way column: Abuse, angry complaints and an email to my boss: How mad are Doncaster's BMW drivers?

Well, it seems I well and truly ruffled the feathers of BMW drivers with last week's column.
One reader was so upset, he dashed off an email to the chief executive of Johnston Press.One reader was so upset, he dashed off an email to the chief executive of Johnston Press.
One reader was so upset, he dashed off an email to the chief executive of Johnston Press.

Abuse on social media and angry missives came thick and fast, presumably from drivers of the aforementioned German auto, fuming at my suggestion that they were all dangerous, road-hogging maniacs with little regard to other users when it came to the general rules of the highway.

“From this generalisation, I can only assume he must be a left wing, tree hugging, pro-immigration, anti-police, car hating, Corbynite remoaner, who will write anything to sell papers regardless of the facts,” huffed one owner of the car with the little blue and white badge.

How very dare you. I don’t hate cars or the police at all.

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Another was that incensed he dashed off an email to the chief executive of Johnston Press, the owners and publishers of the Free Press to “see what he thought to my insulting, biased reporting.”

As a footnote, the Beemer lover also described Don Your Way as “another example of the world’s worst journalism.”

I didn’t have the heart to point out that his email will have fallen on deaf ears - said chief executive left the company last week and I very much doubt that a column bemoaning BMW drivers by one of his scribes in Doncaster would have been the top of his list of priorities as he vacated the building.

Yet more claimed I was fuelled by jealousy, angry that my wages didn’t stretch to being able to be the King of The Road and owner of a piece of finely-tuned Teutonic engineering.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

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I’ve never been a car person, motivated by owning a big set of wheels in some sort of bid to announce my manliness or an extension to by manhood.

I’m more than happy to trundle around in your average family saloon car, the kind that’s littered with empty pop bottles and crisp packets deposited by the kids and caked with mud from endless trips to and from junior league football matches.

What rapidly became apparent from the BMW massive was that I’d most definitely struck a nerve.

Rarely do my words seem to have the power to spark such angry reactions, but as I pointed out at the time, I’m sure there are plenty of responsible BMW drivers out there - I’ve just never seen one or encountered one.

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Indeed, in the days after last week’s column hit the streets, I experienced three more incidents on the roads. Being cut up at a roundabout, buzzed from behind on a 60mph stretch by a driver impatient to get past and another who left it far too late to cut back in after overtaking.

And the make of car involved? Well, two of them were, yes, you’ve guessed it, BMWs. So you lot have still got some way to go to convince me so try being less angry and just a better driver.