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Video Racing Games May Spur Risky Driving
kiwimate writes "A study concludes that people who play car racing games may be more likely to take risks and drive aggressively when driving in real life.
According to the article, "The study appeared in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, published by the American Psychological Association"." Just because after I play Grand Theft Auto I want to ram other cars does not mean I'm a worse driver. Honest.
watching 'care bears' for an extended period of time will make you a more caring and sensitive person.
Any time i see the 'video games made me do it' excuse, I think that the appropriate sentence should be forced to watch 'Barney' for an entire month. Since the person is so easily influenced, this should work perfectly for rehabilitation.
Well, there was that time I patronized a hooker, then immediately afterward bludgeoned her to death, and plucked the money I paid her from where it was floating in the air several inches above her slowly vanishing corpse... wait, that was years before GTA came out. Never mind.
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I played GTA pretty seriously for awhile. The sense of freedom was amazing.
When I first played (and when my wife first played), we tried to obey the traffic laws and stay in the proper lane. After realizing how pointless that was, we were driving on sidewalks, ignoring pedestrians, and laughing with glee when running red lights.
Your brain is very good at unlearning old skills and relearning new ones. The catch is that when doing very similar things, it's easy for one set of skills to bleed into another. Switching from throwing a whiffle ball to a softball requires a period of adjustment. Driving like an insane maniac to a law abiding citizen requires a degree of concentration.
The vast majority of people will likely use caution, focus, and not have any problem at all. Some folks, however, may have difficulty making the switch. Ban all driving games? That seems a bit silly. Banning cell phones or music in cars would likely have a more concrete effect.
And who, according to insurance companies, is the riskiest group? Teenage boys.
I still find myself wanting to take turns faster and change lanes as if no one was really there (no signaling, etc) after playing a few games of Gran Turismo and I'm 28.
Generally I have more control over this impulse than a 16 to 19 year old might have but still the impulse is there. As the numbers of individuals that still play video games continues to increase into the 20/30 age range it *could* have an effect on the driving styles of those individuals past the "teenage boy risky group" you mention.
The study did show some causation. They used subjects that were both video game players and non video game players. They had them either play a racing game or non racing game. Those who played the racing game showed more agressive behavior (in a formal driving simulator) regardless of their video gaming history.
I was judged "not at fault" in the accident, the body armor was unlocked at my hideout for completing a Unique Stunt
Fixed.
Look, this is ridiculous.
If people thought playing computer games would affect your actions in real life, then all those hours of PacMan would have had us running around in darkened rooms listening to repetitive music munching on pills.
Oh wait....
But doesn't that just mean that the formal driving sim was seen more as a game, instead of a sim? I.e. the "it's only a game" though bleeds into the normally serious situation. They should do real-life driving for comparison instead.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.