Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and Julie Douglas. Julie, you
Speaker 1: drive a car, right I do? Do you drive one
Speaker 1: here today? I did? I drove one as well? Did you?
Speaker 1: Did you cut anybody off? That's all over the place,
Speaker 1: Hankins throwing up that middle finger. Um, you know, just
Speaker 1: generally creating mayhem where I could. Yeah, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: what you gotta do. I only ran two people off
Speaker 1: the road this morning. I'm limited myself, saving my my
Speaker 1: energy for the podcast, you know. But yeah, of course
Speaker 1: we're talking about road rage today and really other indignities
Speaker 1: of the road. Yeah, and there are no shortage of
Speaker 1: them all getting aside. I mean, any any given drive
Speaker 1: to work or to visit family, to run an air end.
Speaker 1: You know, we all encounter aggressive drivers, We encounter people
Speaker 1: who are maybe a little playing a littless attention to
Speaker 1: what's going on around them. There are no shortage of
Speaker 1: annoyances out there on America's road. Yeah. And the other
Speaker 1: aspect of that is that cars give this this kind
Speaker 1: of autonomy, right that we've talked about this before. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it makes it seem as though just because we're encased
Speaker 1: in this metal box, were invisible to others. I e.
Speaker 1: We see a lot of picking of the noses. I
Speaker 1: saw that this morning, did vaping, right, That's I've seen
Speaker 1: done a couple of times. Or I I can see
Speaker 1: you with your with your vapories are there? Well, I
Speaker 1: mean that could be legal vaping materials or not. But
Speaker 1: but I have not I have not seen that myself. Well.
Speaker 1: I wanted to throw out this statistic from John Cesana's
Speaker 1: writing Forwards Auto. He said that the number of vehicles
Speaker 1: in operation worldwide surpassed the one billion unit mark in
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten for the first time ever. We
Speaker 1: also know that the volume of vehicles has increased by
Speaker 1: thirty five percent since n and yet the actual networks
Speaker 1: road networks to support those cars has increased by only
Speaker 1: one So more people on the roads, uh, more cars?
Speaker 1: What could go wrong? Yeah? What could possibly go wrong
Speaker 1: with the scenario with nice, level headed people driving there,
Speaker 1: gigantic killing machines down there down the highway in mass Well,
Speaker 1: a little something called road rage. Um, it just happens
Speaker 1: to be one of the responses in a group of
Speaker 1: outbursts known as intermittent explosive disorder, which almost sounds like device,
Speaker 1: right yeah, um, And it's very similar to that because
Speaker 1: in with this kind of disorder you have repeated episodes
Speaker 1: of impulsive, aggressive, violent behavior or angry verbal outbursts in
Speaker 1: which you react really grossly out of proportion to the
Speaker 1: situation and at hand. So it's not just road rage.
Speaker 1: You have examples of domestic abuse, um, throwing or breaking objects,
Speaker 1: essentially the sort of adult temper cantrum, but more in
Speaker 1: a disorder fashion, meaning there's some really very real conditions
Speaker 1: at play here when the person is engaging in this behavior.
Speaker 1: And according to Randy and Laurie Sansone in their article
Speaker 1: road Rage, What's Driving It, which was published in the
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten July edition of the Journal Psychiatry,
Speaker 1: Quote road rage may be described as a constellation of thoughts, emotions,
Speaker 1: and behaviors that occur in response to a perceived unjustified
Speaker 1: provocation while driving. And road rage may also be defined
Speaker 1: as those driving behaviors that endanger or potentially endanger others
Speaker 1: and are accompanied by intentional acts of aggression toward others,
Speaker 1: negative emotions while driving, and risk taking. So road rage
Speaker 1: just those things that's been out there in the media
Speaker 1: for a long time, and not everybody has this very
Speaker 1: clear cut definition about what it is. But I thought
Speaker 1: the sense Owns did a great job of defining it
Speaker 1: in that context. Yeah, it's it's easy to sort is
Speaker 1: you're driving and dealing with difficult drivers, it's easy to
Speaker 1: just sort of throw road rage out there as a
Speaker 1: as as an accusation against any perceived slight. Um. I
Speaker 1: think I've I've in my own experience, I think I've
Speaker 1: thought in terms of road rage when someone has just
Speaker 1: been clearly driving angrily. Uh. But that's a rather different
Speaker 1: thing than say, the time a guy got out of
Speaker 1: his truck and a standstill and like walked up to
Speaker 1: my windshield and was it was gesturing at me like
Speaker 1: he wanted me to get out of a car and
Speaker 1: fight him or something. You know, did you no, no, no,
Speaker 1: But the interesting thing was like just kidding, like what
Speaker 1: you didn't? Yeah, we we've got out our sabers. And
Speaker 1: when I know it was it was like a really
Speaker 1: crazy situation because he like stands in front my wind
Speaker 1: shot and I look up and of course I've just
Speaker 1: like wide eyed and appalled, I guess, and like that
Speaker 1: kind of took like that, that took him down like that,
Speaker 1: just the anger sort of washed out of his face
Speaker 1: and he walked back to his giant truck. There you go,
Speaker 1: little advice, inadvertent advice from you. Yeah, you don't fight
Speaker 1: the road ranger, um, if at all possible. So road rage, yes,
Speaker 1: you're right, has become a catch all term, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk more specifically about that. But when we talk about
Speaker 1: this idea of road rage, or maybe road aggression is
Speaker 1: the better term, what are the conditions that are set forth? Well,
Speaker 1: obviously there's plenty of stuff out there on the road
Speaker 1: to ignite you. Right, you have old people that are
Speaker 1: driving too slow, young people driving too fast. You've got
Speaker 1: cops lurking like sharks to prey upon our our school
Speaker 1: of metal fish as we go down the highway. That's
Speaker 1: what I always feel like. I feel like I'm an
Speaker 1: animal in a herd, or school fish in a school
Speaker 1: of fish. Yeah, shooting fish in a barrel. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's safety in the herd. But that shark is going
Speaker 1: to eat some of us. I just know it is.
Speaker 1: Then you've got sudden stops installed due to traffic, wreck death,
Speaker 1: rubber necking pets, wild animals running across the road, the weather,
Speaker 1: solar issues, the sun shining in your eyes, goes on
Speaker 1: and on. But the classic example, the big one, right
Speaker 1: is the cut off. Somebody cuts you off, or you
Speaker 1: cut off somebody else, and then you it's like in
Speaker 1: a direct affront to some people, Right, you have invaded
Speaker 1: my space. You're trying to take me down a notch
Speaker 1: in society. People get super mad about this. Uh people,
Speaker 1: I mean this, this is this is one of the
Speaker 1: scenarios more than any that seems to result in violence. Well,
Speaker 1: especially the cutting off, Like that's the number one infraction
Speaker 1: that people have a problem with. The honking. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: can all sort of deal with that, but if someone
Speaker 1: actually cuts you off, then they're getting into your personal
Speaker 1: space and that's risky behavior, right, They're involving you in
Speaker 1: a potential accident. So what happens in the brain when
Speaker 1: this happens? When when when an individual does become enraged
Speaker 1: after being cut off, Well, first of all, stress hormone
Speaker 1: cortisol rushes through your blood stream, upping your blood pressure. Okay, Next,
Speaker 1: adrenaline kicks in to heighten your aggression. While the feel
Speaker 1: good serotonin drops and dopamine increases, so your emotional intelligence
Speaker 1: decreases in your body is now posed for flight or fight.
Speaker 1: But of course you're in this metal vehicle. You're locked
Speaker 1: away this this individual will just pulled in front of you.
Speaker 1: Flying away fleeing is not really an option, so your
Speaker 1: body ends up going into war mode. Right And on
Speaker 1: top of that, we may be actually hardwired as humans
Speaker 1: to act more aggressively in crowds, which translates to that
Speaker 1: metal herd that we find ourselves locked inside. Off. Now, again,
Speaker 1: this isn't everybody. Not everybody's having this response to being
Speaker 1: cut off or any other infraction out there on the road. Uh,
Speaker 1: but it may lead you to ask who's actually perpetrating
Speaker 1: all of this. According to a two thousand ten study
Speaker 1: road Rage, What's Driving It published in the journal Psychiatry,
Speaker 1: we're mostly looking at young males as the primary perpetrators here,
Speaker 1: but there are a number of additional variables that play
Speaker 1: into all of this. Okay, First of all, their environmental,
Speaker 1: non psychological factors. So you have to ask questions about
Speaker 1: your potential road ranger. Are they driving an excessive number
Speaker 1: of miles per day? You know, is it their job
Speaker 1: to drive across country all the time? Are they driving
Speaker 1: busy roads? Are they driving crowded roads? Are they packing
Speaker 1: a firearm? Do they feel anonymous in their vehicle and
Speaker 1: therefore cut off from any kind of judgment or perceptions
Speaker 1: about what they're doing? Um? Is their aggressive environmental stimuli
Speaker 1: in the form of billboards or other sciences. That's another
Speaker 1: factor that was mentioned here. And I can't help but
Speaker 1: think that music falls into this area as well. Uh, which,
Speaker 1: of course we're talking about the Flight of the Valkyries, right,
Speaker 1: the most dangerous song in the world. Yeah, just starting
Speaker 1: to science. Yeah, it just gets you revved up. You
Speaker 1: start thinking about flying valkyries and your love for for Wagner.
Speaker 1: But yeah, just another bit of environmental stimula that can
Speaker 1: sort of tip the scales. Right On top of that,
Speaker 1: you also have psych i logical factors that contribute to
Speaker 1: a general tendency to displace anger and blame others. They
Speaker 1: also factored in unrewarding or stressful employment situations as well
Speaker 1: as just the overall stress of modern urban living. And
Speaker 1: then finally, you have bona fide psychiatric disorders to consider here,
Speaker 1: especially alcohol and drug addiction. Anxiety, depression, and anti social
Speaker 1: personality disorder. Okay, so the statistical reality of this is
Speaker 1: very different from what the perception I think is. So
Speaker 1: let's delve into that a little bit. Again. This is
Speaker 1: from sense own study road rage, what's driving it. According
Speaker 1: to the findings of a Canadian telephone survey of more
Speaker 1: than people, thirty one seven percent reported shouting or cursing
Speaker 1: at another driver and two point one percent reported threatening
Speaker 1: to hurt someone or damage a vehicle. Now, again two
Speaker 1: very different reactions. One is an imp I threatened, one
Speaker 1: is an actual threat. And then in another Canadian study
Speaker 1: of more than twenty adults, the twelvemonth prevalence rate for
Speaker 1: admittedly shouting at another driver was thirty two and then
Speaker 1: threatening another driver was one point seven percent, and attempting
Speaker 1: to damage or actually uh damage someone's vehicle was one
Speaker 1: point zero percent. So again you're seeing some of these
Speaker 1: statistics begin to line up. And what I'm talking about
Speaker 1: here is the actual road rage behavior is hovering about
Speaker 1: two percent um. Another study that the Sinsons looked at
Speaker 1: was of dred adults, and they found out about one
Speaker 1: third of community drivers engaged in aggressive behavior toward another
Speaker 1: driver while on the road, but far fewer. Again we're
Speaker 1: talking about less than or at two percent actually reported
Speaker 1: serious threatening behavior or damage to another person or vehicle.
Speaker 1: So what does this data tell us. It tells us
Speaker 1: that what most of us experience on the road is
Speaker 1: really road aggression or road anger. It's not true road
Speaker 1: rage where actual violence is involved, which again is hovering
Speaker 1: more at to just about two percent of the cases.
Speaker 1: And so this sort of boils down to semantics and
Speaker 1: this whole idea that we introduced earlier that it could
Speaker 1: be a catch all phrase. So if someone's um flicking
Speaker 1: you off, that's mount road rage, but it could be
Speaker 1: characterized as such by someone to whom the middle finger
Speaker 1: was thrown at, right, yes, and it and it could
Speaker 1: also easily set somebody off to say, get out of
Speaker 1: their vehicle and stand by your car and challenge you
Speaker 1: to a fight for the other person who actually is
Speaker 1: about to have an intermittent explosive moment there. So the
Speaker 1: reason I bring this up, the statistics or the reality
Speaker 1: of it, is because you would think anybody who is
Speaker 1: living in the nineties would think that road rage was
Speaker 1: happening all of the time, because this is what we
Speaker 1: saw in the media. Yeah, it was quite the media sensation.
Speaker 1: It was the new uh, the new just wonderful scare
Speaker 1: tactic headline, right, because of course, aggressive driving predates automobiles.
Speaker 1: Even Britain's first speedway laws were enacted in the early
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, in fact, to stop horse drawn carriages from
Speaker 1: quote furious driving. You can be furious with just about anything.
Speaker 1: I gonna give humans credit, right. But the phrase itself
Speaker 1: road rage was actually coined in the late nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: by newscasters at kt L A in Los Angeles, following
Speaker 1: a series of very real freeway shootings. But it was
Speaker 1: before road raide really picked up steam as a headline
Speaker 1: stealing scare story. And it has, i mean has all
Speaker 1: the elements, right, because it's this idea you're out there,
Speaker 1: you're you're packed in with all these strangers, and then
Speaker 1: somebody snaps, right, or somebody who just has its explosion
Speaker 1: of anger with violent consequences. Yeah. And what's interesting about
Speaker 1: this is that you can go through a good analytics
Speaker 1: and you can do a search for road rage over
Speaker 1: the past twenty years, you know, past fifteen years, and
Speaker 1: get a good sense of how that that curve on
Speaker 1: the graph going up really corresponds well to the mid
Speaker 1: nineties when it was reaching it's apex right being reported,
Speaker 1: and then you kind of see now where it's not
Speaker 1: as much of a concern, and yet the idea of
Speaker 1: road rage, that it's pervasive is still in our minds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it was almost a viral consistency to it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and the people were on the media talking about, Oh, well,
Speaker 1: what's what's causing it. Some people were saying, Oh, it's
Speaker 1: political correctness, that's it's causing these explosions on the roadways,
Speaker 1: or it's it's Hollywood car chases, or it's mad Max.
Speaker 1: To the road Warrior specifically, that's making people drive like manias.
Speaker 1: That though I've never heard of anyone throwing a grappling
Speaker 1: hook out of the vehicle in l A traffic, but
Speaker 1: but you think they would if they were inspired by
Speaker 1: road wars uh. In article for The Atlantic titled road
Speaker 1: Rage Versus Reality um, and this is a key a
Speaker 1: key article that came out in the whole debate over
Speaker 1: over road rage, Michael of Fimento debunked handful of studies
Speaker 1: and polls they were really supporting the notion of road
Speaker 1: rage at the time, and he argued that road rage
Speaker 1: was just an excessively broad term that was applied to
Speaker 1: a variety of violent situations, and it was ultimately detrimental
Speaker 1: because it also allowed us to ignore behaviors, actual behaviors,
Speaker 1: and actual situations that were causing accidents, such as one
Speaker 1: example that he brings up is people running red lights.
Speaker 1: That's a dangerous scenario that can result in and crashes
Speaker 1: and fatalities. But it's also a problem that has been
Speaker 1: successfully treated with with stoplight cameras in many areas. But
Speaker 1: that's not nearly as sensational a concept as you know,
Speaker 1: the be steel nature of of the human rising up
Speaker 1: in your little car out there on the highway. It does.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sell papers, No, it doesn't write the human
Speaker 1: barbarian and tattered clothing speeding towards you. The reality of
Speaker 1: it is that when road rage does happen, or even
Speaker 1: aggressive driving, when it does happen, it happens in some
Speaker 1: really like boring grid lack traffic scenarios when someone has
Speaker 1: been marinating and say like a two hour long traffic
Speaker 1: gridlock situation, that's when you see tempers flare. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I do want to mention, there's not a single traffic
Speaker 1: jam scene in Road Warior. It's all it's all constant motion.
Speaker 1: There's no bumper to bupper traffic in that film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because if it, if it were, that would be an
Speaker 1: entirely different movie, right, but the sort of post apocalyptic
Speaker 1: circumstances would not have occurred. Yeah. I would like to
Speaker 1: see a post apocalyptic traffic jam film. That would be good.
Speaker 1: All right, someone's working on it. All right. We're going
Speaker 1: to talk about the territorial markings that we make with
Speaker 1: our cars and what we do to our cars and
Speaker 1: what that says about us when we have, say a
Speaker 1: bumper sticker. Indeed, you do see a bupper sticker scenario
Speaker 1: out on the road. Is rather interesting because you see
Speaker 1: that the cars without completely just completely devoid of stickers,
Speaker 1: and you have the ones with a sprinkling and then
Speaker 1: they're the ones where every political or social or music
Speaker 1: related interest that I have will be represented on the
Speaker 1: rear of my vehicle. Yeah, And I just want to
Speaker 1: mention this. In passing, one of the strangest personalized license
Speaker 1: plates I've ever seen was on like r X seven,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of a sporty car driven by a guy,
Speaker 1: and it said whacking it, whacking it, whack it like
Speaker 1: like whackamobile. I will leave the interpretation up to you guys.
Speaker 1: Maybe he was the inventor of whackamole and that's how
Speaker 1: he made his fortune and purchase that automobile. Maybe, but
Speaker 1: the fact that he had a personalized license plate tells
Speaker 1: us a little bit something about him. And the reason
Speaker 1: we know this is because we were looking at a
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight Colorado State University study by social
Speaker 1: psychologist William Salimco, who wanted to see if drivers of
Speaker 1: cars with these kind of ornament right bumper stickers, window decals,
Speaker 1: personalized license plates, and other sort of territorial markers, if
Speaker 1: they not only get mad when someone cuts in their
Speaker 1: lane or is slow to respond to a change traffic light,
Speaker 1: if these people are more likely than those who do
Speaker 1: not personalize their cars to use their vehicles to express
Speaker 1: aggressive driving behavior. So again, aggressive driving behavior could be tailgating, honking,
Speaker 1: you know, just the other random stuff, you know, flicking
Speaker 1: someone off. So participants were asked to describe the value
Speaker 1: and condition of their cars, as well as whether they
Speaker 1: had personalized them in any way, and the researchers would record,
Speaker 1: you know, if they had seat covers, bumper stickers, special
Speaker 1: special paint jobs, stereos, or even plastic dashboard toys, and
Speaker 1: then they asked them a bunch of questions about their
Speaker 1: driving and so to keep the participants from realizing what
Speaker 1: the team was getting it, they put in some you know,
Speaker 1: fake questions like hey, what kind of music do you
Speaker 1: listen to in the car, along with questions like if
Speaker 1: someone is driving slow in the fast lane, how angry
Speaker 1: does this make you? And they used a pre existing
Speaker 1: scale called use a vehicle to express anger to ferret
Speaker 1: out those participants who might use aggression while driving. So,
Speaker 1: of course, people who had a larger number of personalized
Speaker 1: items on or in their car were six more likely
Speaker 1: to engage in anger fueled road behavior. That's not huge,
Speaker 1: but that's significant. And so the other finding they had
Speaker 1: is that when it came to bumper stickers, it didn't
Speaker 1: matter if you had bumper sticker that said coexist or
Speaker 1: world peace, or if you had I love guns. You
Speaker 1: know it did the sentiment didn't matter. Just the fact
Speaker 1: that you personalize your car mattered. Now it sounds like
Speaker 1: the study came before putting testicles on your truck became
Speaker 1: a thing. So I guess we we sadly don't see
Speaker 1: that represented in the data, although that would be in
Speaker 1: that that would be under the umbrella of personalizing the car. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you decide to hang a pair of metal
Speaker 1: testicles on your car, you possibly could be in this
Speaker 1: category of a higher degree of aggressive car behavior. So
Speaker 1: the question then becomes why, why if you personalize your car,
Speaker 1: why might you have drift more aggressively. Well, the idea
Speaker 1: is that people carry around three kinds of territorial spaces
Speaker 1: in their heads. One is personal territory like home or
Speaker 1: your bedroom. The second involved space that's temporarily yours, say,
Speaker 1: like an office cubicle or a gym locker, and then
Speaker 1: the third is a kind of public territory, so park benches,
Speaker 1: walking trails, and of course roads. So the idea is
Speaker 1: that you the more you personalize your car, the more
Speaker 1: it's becoming this sort of territory that you're wielding in
Speaker 1: these different spaces. Okay, yeah, and you can see that
Speaker 1: sort of transform onto on the road into a situation
Speaker 1: of like, my space is this position on the road
Speaker 1: that with a certain maintained space between vehicles a certain
Speaker 1: maintained speed that I get to to keep on the road,
Speaker 1: and if you infringe on any of those, you're infringing
Speaker 1: on this space exactly. And of course it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that if you have a bumper sticker or something or
Speaker 1: dashboard that you're driving around recklessly. It's just this one
Speaker 1: study just tells us a little bit of a statistic here,
Speaker 1: sixteen percent more likely to engage in anger fueled antics. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, another area in which we invest ourselves personally
Speaker 1: in our in our automobiles and can get rather possessive
Speaker 1: comes to parking spaces. And we've all encountered this, right.
Speaker 1: What you're you're you're dropping by the by the grocery
Speaker 1: store to pick up some things, right or uh, you
Speaker 1: know coming in and out of work. Uh, the parking
Speaker 1: lot is busy. Uh. You go in, you get what
Speaker 1: you need to do, you come out, you're going to leave.
Speaker 1: You're pulling out of your parking place and there's somebody
Speaker 1: waiting on the parking place already, and this weird territorial
Speaker 1: nature kicks in and it doesn't make any sense, right
Speaker 1: because you're done with this place, You're about to go
Speaker 1: home or go on to the next point on your timeline.
Speaker 1: But instead, what do you do? You maybe linger a
Speaker 1: little bit, maybe you you make some some evil eyes
Speaker 1: at the person that's waiting or even hawking for you
Speaker 1: to move. Well. Study actually looked into this titled Territorial
Speaker 1: defense in Parking Lots Retaliation against waiting Drivers, and they
Speaker 1: were just how possessive we get about those parking places,
Speaker 1: demonstrating that drivers are territorial even when it runs completely
Speaker 1: contrary to the goal of leaving the flipping parking lot.
Speaker 1: So they conducted three studies here. In the first one
Speaker 1: that they observed two hundred departing cars, and they found
Speaker 1: that intruded upon draw rivers took longer to leave a
Speaker 1: space than non intruded upon drivers. So again, somebody's making
Speaker 1: a visual sign of waiting and being a little grumpy
Speaker 1: about you taking your time versus somebody that you don't
Speaker 1: even notice. Right. Study to involved two forty drivers with
Speaker 1: a manipulated level of intrusion and status of intruding car,
Speaker 1: meaning is it a clunker that's waiting on you to
Speaker 1: leave or is it, you know, somebody in a fancy
Speaker 1: sports car. And they found that drivers took longer to
Speaker 1: leave when another car was present and when the intruder hanked.
Speaker 1: So the hank is the kiss of death if you
Speaker 1: really want them to give up that that that's parking space.
Speaker 1: In short order, they also found that males left significantly
Speaker 1: sooner when intruded upon by a higher rather than a
Speaker 1: lower status car, but females departure time didn't differ as
Speaker 1: a function of the status of the car. So to
Speaker 1: the males it mattered, Oh, this is a big important
Speaker 1: sports car waiting on me. I had better move, But
Speaker 1: the females in this study didn't care. And finally, they
Speaker 1: simply pulled individuals at them all uh and asked what
Speaker 1: would they do if if they were pulling out and
Speaker 1: somebody honked at them? And they found in the vast
Speaker 1: majority of them said that they would take longer to
Speaker 1: leave if the driver of the car halked. I have
Speaker 1: to say, the honking is sort of terrible, and um,
Speaker 1: I've done it before. I had to ask myself, like,
Speaker 1: have I kind of uh waited around in my parking
Speaker 1: space before pulling out because someone was really impatient and
Speaker 1: did that? And yes, because I think of myself as
Speaker 1: an efficient egressor and enter of the car, and and
Speaker 1: that this is something that I'm not usually, you know,
Speaker 1: hanging out in my car and doing stuff. So it feels,
Speaker 1: you know, when someone does that, like terribly impatient. And
Speaker 1: I remember once that I got in my car and
Speaker 1: just sort of unwrapped a piece of Wriggley's gum for
Speaker 1: a very long time before putting the car and reverts
Speaker 1: because you do, it's like you're trying to exact some
Speaker 1: sort of punishment or just just this is still my space.
Speaker 1: This space is still mine for as long as I
Speaker 1: want it, and you will wait your turn, Honker. It's right,
Speaker 1: ten more seconds of luxuriously unwrapping this gum, you know.
Speaker 1: And we have a weird relationship with the hank in
Speaker 1: in America, it seems because you go to other places,
Speaker 1: uh specifically I'm guess I'm thinking of of of Mexico
Speaker 1: and some parts of Latin America, where like the hank
Speaker 1: is a signal to say, hey, I am here, or
Speaker 1: it's or it's it more about just this letting other
Speaker 1: drivers know that you were present or that some sort
Speaker 1: of accident situation might happen. But in the in the States,
Speaker 1: it seems like to blow the horn is to say
Speaker 1: you were out of line and possibly potentially killing people. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's the duration of the signal. So if
Speaker 1: it's a quick beat, you know, or a quick honk,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, hey, come on, what I'm here
Speaker 1: to lay on? The horn is the problem. And this
Speaker 1: reminds me too of the politeness episode that we just did,
Speaker 1: and we were talking about communication and in directness and
Speaker 1: how in Russia, the more direct the better, and how
Speaker 1: people don't lose face, you know, because they don't have
Speaker 1: a problem with that sort of negative feedback. But perhaps
Speaker 1: here in the United States were a little bit more
Speaker 1: sensitive to that, to the honk, And that may be
Speaker 1: because we see the car as an extension of ourselves.
Speaker 1: We've already put out this idea that it could be
Speaker 1: a sort of territory for us, the third home for us,
Speaker 1: for a second home of sorts um. But there's this
Speaker 1: idea that it could actually like physically embody us. And
Speaker 1: that is not a new concept that we have introduced
Speaker 1: on this podcast before, because we talked about tool use
Speaker 1: and how humans we we fold our hands around a
Speaker 1: tool and all of a sudden becomes part of us,
Speaker 1: and we have body schema. We have a map in
Speaker 1: our mind of where we are in space and time,
Speaker 1: and we incorporate these objects. And we've even talked about
Speaker 1: how the mind will sometimes adopt a fake limb in
Speaker 1: the right context, of course, usually an experiment as our own,
Speaker 1: if prompted right. So we've got that sort of pro
Speaker 1: pre aceptive drift to other objects in people um when
Speaker 1: the context warrants it. So it's not so weird to
Speaker 1: think that you could do the same thing with your car. Now.
Speaker 1: There's a two thousand eleven Temple University paper by A.
Speaker 1: Yalia Rubio who found that two studies on driving in
Speaker 1: relationship to car bore out this idea that a car
Speaker 1: could be an extension of yourself and as a result,
Speaker 1: you could have stronger aggressive driving tendencies. So Rubio and
Speaker 1: a colleague used a hundred and thirty four surveys of
Speaker 1: men and women in Israel averaging UH twenty three point
Speaker 1: five years of age to examine the influence of personality,
Speaker 1: attitudes and values on driving, and the researchers also looked
Speaker 1: at the factors of risk, attraction, impulsivity, and driving. I
Speaker 1: love this as a hedonistic activity as well as perceptions
Speaker 1: about time pressures. And they did this with another two
Speaker 1: people too, so they had a sort of part B
Speaker 1: of this study that involved some of the people from
Speaker 1: the first study, and they saw an uptick in disregard
Speaker 1: for road rules, aggressive behavior, and the sense that these
Speaker 1: people were under more pressure in terms of time. So
Speaker 1: it's worth noting that this study is dealing with an
Speaker 1: age group that is younger, and as a result, Rubio
Speaker 1: and her colleagues posit that some of this has to
Speaker 1: do this attachment to car and extension of cell through car,
Speaker 1: with the fact that people haven't really developed their personalities
Speaker 1: fully yet, and so part of this car is informing
Speaker 1: who they think they are and the sort of maybe
Speaker 1: the bleeding edges of themselves out there in a public space.
Speaker 1: And this is where we see things like the red
Speaker 1: car situation, right, well, more like this sports cars are
Speaker 1: you're thinking like the red sports car and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: hey I'm here, I'm going to tear it up on
Speaker 1: the streets. Yeah, that sort of any McQueen persona if
Speaker 1: you've seen cars, Okay, that's right, I have not seen it,
Speaker 1: but I know of what do you speak? It's a
Speaker 1: kid favorite, um, But so yeah, there's this idea that
Speaker 1: that part of your personality is being performed by the car.
Speaker 1: But then of course you have the risk taking. And
Speaker 1: anybody who worked for an insurance company knows what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about, or anybody who has someone on their policy
Speaker 1: who's under the age of twenty five knows what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. You're going to get charged more for youth
Speaker 1: when youth is driving, because youth doesn't have the fully forward,
Speaker 1: prefunct frontal cortex that we've talked about before, specifically when
Speaker 1: we've talked about the teenage brain. Yeah, they're gonna take
Speaker 1: more risks, more risk to fit in. It's to the
Speaker 1: teenage brain. It's vital to find a place in some
Speaker 1: sort of social scenario so that they can survive. Right
Speaker 1: in the pre ful to cortex and in the executive
Speaker 1: function of hey, is this a good idea? Maybe not
Speaker 1: be as fully engaged at that age as you would
Speaker 1: want it to be. And of course, in America, those
Speaker 1: teenagers grow up into uh, into a culture that has
Speaker 1: historically loved its automobiles. I mean, the automobile industry has
Speaker 1: I mean continues to be a symbol of of American ingenuity.
Speaker 1: UH and UH an accomplishment and freedom. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's as well as other vehicles such as the motorcycle. Right,
Speaker 1: the freedom to be out there and own the road.
Speaker 1: But our times a change in uh, they might be.
Speaker 1: According to a Pew Research Center of study from two
Speaker 1: thousand ten published as Americans in their Cars is the
Speaker 1: Romance on the skids and uh, they looked at the
Speaker 1: trends in terms of loving your car versus just seeing
Speaker 1: your cars this thing you have to be and to
Speaker 1: go from point A to point B. They found in
Speaker 1: two thousand ten that six of American drivers said that
Speaker 1: they like to drive they genuinely liked it, and that
Speaker 1: was down from sevent and just twenty percent said that
Speaker 1: they considered the car something special compared to forty in
Speaker 1: ninety one. Now, the Pew survey identified a number of
Speaker 1: different factors that were contributing to these trends, and you
Speaker 1: might think that gasoline might be a big one, but
Speaker 1: gas actually only came in at three percent. Three percent
Speaker 1: of people saying that gas gasolene prices factored in to
Speaker 1: their uh, they're they're they're falling out of love with cars. Um.
Speaker 1: The big one was traffic congestion of those surveyed. Another
Speaker 1: big factor other drivers fourteen percent. So already we see
Speaker 1: what thirty seven percent tied to traffic congestion and having
Speaker 1: to put up with other people in the cars that
Speaker 1: make up that congestion. Commuting as another ten percent on
Speaker 1: on top of that, and then running errands also contributed
Speaker 1: ten percent um And again this is all this is
Speaker 1: all pointing back to that idea that was just more
Speaker 1: and more cars out there, more people driving on these
Speaker 1: these these roads, that that just can't keep up with
Speaker 1: the increase in population. A National Household Travel survey in
Speaker 1: two thousand and one found that at that point, for
Speaker 1: the first time since the studies have been conducted, there
Speaker 1: were more personal vehicles on the road two d and
Speaker 1: four million than licensed licensed drivers million in the country.
Speaker 1: It's still noted that that in that Pew survey of Americans.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's still two third margin of Americans
Speaker 1: who love driving. And we still do a lot. We
Speaker 1: still spend a lot of time in our car. We're
Speaker 1: singing there, we listen to music, we listen to podcasts,
Speaker 1: we talk on the phone, we read, we groom, we sleep. Uh,
Speaker 1: but we do seem to do a lot of things
Speaker 1: that are about making do with our time in the
Speaker 1: car or even sort of transcending that time we have
Speaker 1: to spend in the car versus just really loving the road. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think you're touching on something here with technology
Speaker 1: becoming so much more a part of our lives and
Speaker 1: informing our lives, that we begin to look for these
Speaker 1: bits of all in time right where we can listen
Speaker 1: to a podcast or listen to music, or access one
Speaker 1: million other things that we can via the Internet. And
Speaker 1: so this idea that Tesla co founder and CEO Elon
Speaker 1: Musk has is really interesting. He thinks that computers will
Speaker 1: do a much better job than us when it comes
Speaker 1: to driving, to the point where statistically humans would be
Speaker 1: a liability on the roadways and would be banned from
Speaker 1: driving in the future sometime. Yeah. I mean he makes
Speaker 1: the comparison to elevators. Right in the old days, you
Speaker 1: got an elevator, there's an elevator operator to make this
Speaker 1: piece of machinery go up and down. But it got
Speaker 1: to the point where we didn't need the operator anymore.
Speaker 1: The technology was such that the elevators took care of
Speaker 1: above everything, and if you had an operator, it would
Speaker 1: hinder the process, right, And so you've got these two
Speaker 1: different things going on. You have computers rising to the
Speaker 1: occasion to to do this in a way that it
Speaker 1: um manageable, right, not cost effective now, but perhaps in
Speaker 1: the future. And then you have us consuming so much
Speaker 1: media and trying to find spare moments in our lives
Speaker 1: that we're pretty open to trying out something like this
Speaker 1: if it means that on our commute we could read
Speaker 1: a book on um a device as opposed to sit
Speaker 1: there in you know, knuckle whitening traffic, trying not to
Speaker 1: yell at someone or get angry about something. And ultimately
Speaker 1: computers would be able to just manage the flow of
Speaker 1: traffic more efficiently. In this scenario, you wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: worry about all the little things like rubber necking and tailgating.
Speaker 1: Everything could be could There could be a standard distance
Speaker 1: between cars, the standard speed could be maintained, and yeah,
Speaker 1: to your point, you could just lean back, read a
Speaker 1: book and not worry about all those little things on
Speaker 1: the road. Yeah, sounds lovely. And according to the Boston
Speaker 1: Consulting Group, fully automated automated driver less cars could make
Speaker 1: up nearly ten percent of global vehicle sales or about
Speaker 1: twelve million cars a year by the year twenty five,
Speaker 1: So it's something that could happen, you know, over the
Speaker 1: next couple of decades. Here. Yeah, we've been developing the
Speaker 1: technology for some time, so it's really not a matter
Speaker 1: of if, but but when. Yeah, and and also a
Speaker 1: matter of like, well, how are we going tomok that up?
Speaker 1: As humans? You know, like how are we going to
Speaker 1: express our status in these driver list cars? Or maybe
Speaker 1: even just having a driver list car at that point
Speaker 1: becomes a status object. And what will whacken it? Think
Speaker 1: of it? Right? Will he appreciate having uh this free
Speaker 1: time in the vehicle or is he going to miss
Speaker 1: the command of his vehicle on the open road? And
Speaker 1: what will he be doing in his vehicle? We don't know,
Speaker 1: there's no way to know alright, Today you have a
Speaker 1: road rage aggressive driving um, something I think we can
Speaker 1: all relate to on one level or another. If you
Speaker 1: want to check out more topics related to human behavior alemobiles?
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