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Video Games Linked To Reckless Driving
An anonymous reader writes "'A new study suggests video games that involve reckless driving may play out in real life. Researchers say their data should not be taken lightly since car accidents are the number one cause of death for teenagers.' Just a case of video games being used as a convenient scapegoat, or could there be some truth to this?"
Bingo. Driving games could cause reckless driving in real life. Or people who drive recklessly enjoy driving games. Reckless go-kart racing could also be associated with both games and automobile driving, but that wasn't the focus of the study.
I'm glad TFA admitted that one isn't necessarily the cause of the other, thereby bypassing the whole causation != correlation argument. Kudos for that.
That's just nonsense.. Without all those extended training sessions playing Forza, I'd never be able to drive safely on the highway at 90+ mph.
Frankly, there are too many of these damn kids around anyway.
The only time my poor driving skills from video games crosses over into my real driving is when I'm playing a driving game while driving my car.
About 10 years ago I got really into the game "Midtown Madness" which features races where you race free-form through downtown Chicago picking your own route to hit a number of checkpoints. The game requires you to read traffic patterns, lights, etc far in advance. After playing the game, I found that I was doing the same thing in real traffic. My brain had been trained to observe and anticipate as if I were driving through city traffic at 80MPH rather than 35. I became much more aware of what was happening on cross streets, and in lanes other than mine. It faded back to normal, though, as I moved on to other games.
I do wonder, however, if being able to crash a car repeatedly with no real consequences has an impact on your subconcious risk-assesment of various manuvers.
People have been claiming this since Spy Hunter came out. It was bunk then and it is bunk now. It's not video games that make you drive fast, it's the Peter Gunn theme.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Aptly enough the fortune right now reads "You can get *anywhere* in ten minutes if you drive fast enough." :D
So, this is my fault for making sure I'm properly prepared for my road trip by packing plenty of turtle shells, banana peels, and mushrooms? Unbelieveable...
see .. you made his point : Video Games teach you how to behave in real life : Do whatever you want, jus don't get caught!
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
When I was 15, Race Drivin' (the sequel to Hard Drivin') was out; it was a sit-down racing simulator with amazingly realistic wheel feedback/physics. Unlike basically every other game I've played, the car you were driving behaved much like a real car. (ie, you could fish tail, and if you steered with the slide you could recover)
The first time I ever accidentally fishtailed my car in real life, I instinctively steered with the slide and recovered. I've heard that people without training tend to turn against the slide and exacerbate the problem. I have always thought that without my really extensive Race Drivin' playing, I wouldn't have reacted that way. (And when I say extensive, I mean it - I got to the point where I could gain time on laps and once played for an entire hour and stood up with the "remaining time" at the cap.)
People talk about having positive role models for children. This is because we, as humans, look towards those we admire and emulate them. Race car drivers, whether real, in a video game, on a movie screen are "cool" in a lot of people's eyes. What they do is cool. Their lives are cool. We envy the thrills for which they get paid.
I remember several years ago I had some sneak preview tickets for The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Let me just say that I waited 30 minutes after the end of that movie before everyone who had just seen it had finished peeling out of the parking lot and speeding away recklessly. And these were normal people, from a wide range of age groups. Maybe the young ARE more impressionable, but that doesn't allow one to place the blame solely on the medium. Any example of alternate behavior lends itself to emulation. Whether that takes the form of a "copycat" killer or holding the door open for someone isn't necessarily the result of exposure, but merely the impulsiveness and decision-making skills of the one exposed. Whether you agree or disagree on the merits, this is why we have ratings systems for video games. And for film. To limit the exposure from those whose decision-making skills haven't completely matured, albeit deciding who is limited in an arbitrary manner.
This isn't meant to advance a viewpoint one way or the other - it's merely an observation.
See? These cultural blinders we don't even know we're wearing. Only in America and related countries is it "traditional" for teenagers to be risk-takers. Decades of MTV have taken effect. I live inside another culture and here, teens are assumed to have other traits, none of which is a fondness for irresponsible behavior. In fact, the very idea of "teenager" doesn't really exist.
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers. Plato
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Yeah, because it was in the west that life expectancies actually hit a point where you could be pretty sure you'd survive past 40 and be a grandparent and the idea of being a great grandparent wasn't out of the question. In other countries its commonplace to marry at 16 or earlier and start a family. In America and related countries (which I'm assuming you mean Europe and the westernized countries of Asia) waiting until your mid twenties or later to get married and start a family is pretty typical.
Because in western culture its not typical to get married early, there is a time where teenagers have a time to really decide what they want to do with their life and yes, some of it may involve -gasp- risk taking, but the entire mentality is born out of the fact that life expectancies have increased dramatically.
I'm sure in all of the other countries there are reckless kids but because they are poor they start families earlier, take more risky jobs, etc. and so its not considered to be "risky" when it really involves a high mortality rate.
In many other countries in the present and in the past, it used to be that you could die from pretty typical stuff like an infection, common illnesses, etc. since we've conquered most of that in the west with the exception of things like cancer, of course car accidents are going to be the leading cause of death because what else would a western teenager die from? We've thankfully ended the tyrannical practice of having a non-volunteer army so kids aren't being killed in wars, cured the vast majority of sicknesses, need to use very little hard labor for the vast majority of things, etc. so the common causes of death in other countries don't exist in the west for teenagers.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Here is some information for you:
/. if I do say so myself.
Top Gear vs Gran Turismo - Possibly the most awesome thing ever posted to
wiki reference
I've seen this done by other gaming mags before with similar results. If someone has those links that would be awesome as well.