Excuse us if you’ve already devoured the latest volume of the Journal of Transport & Health, but the March issue contains the results of a novel experiment that tested a cherished automotive stereotype. The study is entitled “Estimated Car Cost as a Predictor of Driver Yielding Behavior for Pedestrians,” but you can think of it as, “Are BMW drivers really jerks or what?”
Okay, so it was more nuanced than that. The authors of the study sent four pedestrians—black female, black male, white female, white male—to crosswalks in the Las Vegas area to see how many drivers would yield. The overall results were pretty dismal, with a yield rate of only about 28 percent out of 461 cars. Cars yielded more often to female and white pedestrians than male and nonwhite pedestrians, although not enough either way to register as statistically significant. The only factor that consistently predicted yielding behavior was the value of the car. Notably, the study’s authors estimated the book value on all 461 cars, so the 2004 Mercedes S-class that’s worth $ 5000 didn’t get ascribed automatic snob appeal.
The results—that a driver’s likelihood of yielding declines by 3 percent for every $ 1000 increase in value of the car—wasn’t a huge surprise. Prior studies in California have found that drivers of nicer cars are more likely to exhibit unethical behavior, cutting other drivers off at a four-way intersection and failing to yield to pedestrians. The explanation for this, according to the latest study, “may be that drivers of higher-value cars . . . felt a sense of superiority over other road users.” Other studies have found that people with higher socioeconomic status have less empathy in general. But does driving a luxury car automatically make you a cretin?
As people who regularly switch perceived socioeconomic status in the course of a day—drive to work in a Sentra, drive home in a Senna—we can hypothesize that the behavior catalogued in this study could be part of a feedback loop. As in, you drive your Panamera Turbo like a dick because that’s how you’re treated by your fellow road users. Trust us: nobody yields to a Porsche. When you’re driving a fancy car, you’re an avatar for everyone else’s bad boss, useless trust-fund roommate, or absent workaholic father. And you’re treated as such. That, perhaps, manifests in the way that you yourself drive. Attitude begets attitude.
However, if you’re driving an actual exotic, something way far up the food chain, behavior changes again. Everyone yields to the Rolls or the Lambo because cars like that are so over the top, they make you interesting by association. Plus: most people don’t know anybody with a car like that; thus they can’t associate it with anyone awful. The ultra-expensive car, and the driver, are a curiosity. What’s that guy’s deal? He probably invented that fake grass that goes between the pieces of sushi. And good for him! But the guy in the 911? He can wait an extra two turns at the four-way intersection. Probably deserves it.
Our not-scientific conclusions: If you expect fellow road users to demonstrate courtesy, you should drive either a 1984 Renault Alliance or a Lamborghini Aventador SVJ roadster. But either way, and to everybody in between: Yield at the damn crosswalks.
