If You Drive An Expensive Car You Are Probably A Jerk, Scientists Say

A new study has found that drivers of flashy vehicles are less likely to stop and allow pedestrians to cross the road.

“I am the King of the Road …”
A car photo

– News covered by Quincy Quarry News with commentary added  

If you drive an expensive car you are probably a jerk, scientists say.

The science appears to be unanimous on this one: drivers of expensive cars are the worst.

A recent study found that drivers of high end vehicles are less likely to stop and allow pedestrians to cross the road, with the likelihood they will slow down decreasing by 3% for every extra $1,000 that their vehicle is worth.

“I own the road.”
A ThePeoplesVoice.org graphic image

The study’s authors from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas speculated that the expensive car owners “felt a sense of superiority over other road users” and were less able to empathize with lowly sidewalk-dwellers.

They came to this conclusion after asking volunteers to cross a sidewalk hundreds of times, filming and analyzing the responses by car drivers.

Researchers used one white and one black man, and one white and one black woman — also finding that cars were more likely to yield for the white and female participants.  Vehicles stopped 31% of the time for both women and white participants, compared with 24% of the time for men and 25% of the time for black volunteers.

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Image via GTR Lighting

But the best predictor of whether a car would stop was its cost, researchers unexpectedly discovered.

And this study’s finding of a car-value-to-jerkish-behavior correlation is not unique. 

A Finnish study published last month that found that men who own flashy vehicles are more likely to be “argumentative, stubborn, disagreeable and unempathetic.”

Cop bad driver’s (right) personal ride
Image via WCVB

According to that survey of 1,892 drivers by the University of Helsinki, those deemed to have more disagreeable character traits were “more drawn to high-status cars.”

“I … noticed that the ones most likely to run a red light, not give way to pedestrians and generally drive recklessly and too fast were often the ones driving fast German cars,” Helsinki University’s Jan-Erik Lönnqvist.

A masshole’s beater?
A Fiveprime image via Flickr

Additionally, Lönnqvist noted previous research that indicated drivers behind the wheel of a costly vehicle are more likely to flout traffic regulations or drive recklessly.

At the same time, however, neither study could explain why Massachusetts’ infamous masshole drivers drive all manner of rides and most especially beaters.

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Source: If You Drive An Expensive Car You’re Probably A Jerk, Scientists Say