Study Suggests People Who Drive Expensive Cars Are Less Likely to Stop For Pedestrians

By Mayukh Saha / Truth Theory

It is quite common for people to think of their cars as their friends. A little weird is when they start calling them their wife or something like that. However, we are no one to judge. Cars are an integral part of our life. People who commute to work spend a lot of their time inside their cars. So, it is not an accident that people have such intense feelings towards their cars. And, recent studies have even shown that the kind of cars we drive can even affect our behavior. This is true, especially for expensive cars. 

Recently, research was done on how expensive cars alter a person’s behavior. The study was conducted by the University of Nevada and published in the Journal of Transport and Health. The study came to the conclusion that people who own expensive cars will think twice about sharing the road or stopping for a pedestrian. 

Do Expensive Cars Make Us Road-Jerks?

Data collected by the researchers prove that expensive car drivers usually would not wait for pedestrians to cross the road. By every $1000 more of the car’s price, the likelihood of a person stopping for pedestrians to cross the street falls by at least 3%. 

The study was done by taking in several volunteers to dress up as normal pedestrians. Then, they were shuffled around various crosswalks. The test was done over hundreds of times. Each time, they documented what car drove past and how the drivers reacted to the pedestrians. 

The researchers found that the more expensive the car was, the less emphatic the driver was. Researchers deemed that the owners of expensive cars showed a superiority complex over all the other people on the road. And as a result, they did not show any signs to yield. 

For the study, the researchers took in several volunteers of different races and genders. From the results, they found that the race and gender of the pedestrian also altered the driver’s behavior. This fell true for all the drivers, of both expensive and cheap cars. 

Race And Gender Also Played A Role In Effecting Driver Behavior

The study found that 31 percent of cars slowed down for caucasian people and women. Meanwhile, 24 percent tailed the road for men. And, 25 percent of drivers slowed down for non-caucasian individuals. 

Although these factors add to the behavior of the driver, the cost of the cars still held significant importance. The researchers concluded that this unempathetic behavior stemmed from the driver’s feeling of narcissism and entitlement. 

In June, researchers from Finland also conducted similar tests and found that men with expensive cars showed a superiority complex over others. 

Researchers from the University of Helsinki theorized that disagreeable, unemphatic, argumentative, and stubborn drivers drove expensive cars. 

Image Credit: Olena Kachmar