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New Finnish study confirms that BMW and Audi owners drive like idiots

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52 points by onreact 6 years ago · 33 comments

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jp57 6 years ago

The study was actually titled "Not only assholes drive Mercedes. Besides disagreeable men, also conscientious people drive high‐status cars."

Treehugger implied that they couldn't print the title because of the word "asshole", but maybe it was because the title contradicts the message that they're trying to send with the article?

perceptronas 6 years ago

Everyone who drives slower than me is an idiot, everyone who drives faster than me is a maniac [1]

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWPCE2tTLZQ (George Carlin)

  • mattmanser 6 years ago

    I do recommend counting cars you overtake and those that over take you.

    Turns out I was overtaking 10 cars for every car that overtook me. I've calmed down since then as it really put it in context how fast I was driving.

    • usaphp 6 years ago

      It does not show anything, most of the cars you overtake are cars that are just preparing for an exit from highway or just entered the highway thus they have slower speed

      • mynegation 6 years ago

        I do what Mattmanser does on long highways with not too much traffic as a proxy of me going with the flow. I discount merging vehicles, it’s harder to take into account exiting vehicles but with exits being rare that works ok. Also: waze

  • tzs 6 years ago

    Kind of like Isaac Asimov on writing. I can't find it online, but he once said that he writes better than anyone who writes faster, and faster than anyone who writes better.

lawlorino 6 years ago

Unfortunately I couldn't find a link to an open/free version of the original paper. I'm always extremely sceptical of papers like this that seemed designed to grab headlines and confirm most people's existing biases.

  • trevyn 6 years ago
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  • jmnicolas 6 years ago

    Are you driving a BMW or an Audi by any chance ? ;-)

    • stanferder 6 years ago

      Well you could be driving two Cadillacs at the same time

      And one's going 45, and one's going 99

danw1979 6 years ago

I tend to think owning a overly-powerful car (which includes basically all German turbo diesels) is more likely to encourage you to drive fast.

I'm not a great driver... no serious accidents on four wheels in 20 years of motoring, but plenty of very near misses and I've messed myself up on two wheels a few times.

I'm definitely a slower, more careful driver since I got a Prius. It's the kind of car that gives you a few moments to think about why you just put the pedal down before it does anything.

If I drove an S3 or a Tesla P I'd be just another one of those otherwise conscientious idiots driving too fast.

Ididntdothis 6 years ago

That’s definitely something you notice on the German autobahn. The ones that are 1mm on your rear bumper or constantly give you “Lichthupe” are often smaller Mercedes, BMW or Audi. I have rarely seen sports cars like Porsche or Ferrari behave that way.

  • hwj 6 years ago

    I can confirm that.

    However, it's probably because there are much more Audi/BWM/Mercedes on German Autobahns than Porsche or Ferrari.

  • agumonkey 6 years ago

    often I wish that roads had "wiper" cars that would fill the whole width and drive at the maximum limit and not more. :)

sda2 6 years ago

in my locale, Tesla drivers are far worse than any BMW/Merc/Audi. The combination of pretentiousness and a car that promotes unconscious driving leads to bad outcomes.

tuukkah 6 years ago

The real title and abstract of the study here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ijop.12642

"Not only assholes drive Mercedes. Besides disagreeable men, also conscientious people drive high-status cars. [--] An important implication is that the association between driving a high-status car and unethical driving behaviour may not, as is commonly argued, be due to the corruptive effects of wealth. Rather, certain personality traits, such as low agreeableness, may be associated with both unethical driving behaviour and with driving a high-status car."

mattrp 6 years ago

My wife calls them pr-audis.. it’s particularly bad in New Jersey where no matter what road, time of day, how fast you’re driving, there’s always a praudi driver on your rear who seems to be really angry you are in front of them.

mannykannot 6 years ago

There was a time when BMW's advertizing seemed to be very specifically aimed at the self-important, entitled, yet insecure person, but I think that has changed (or I have just stopped paying attention.) Nowadays, bad driving seems to be more widely spread - a combination of "fuck you, I can do whatever I want", self-absorption and inattention, as typified by the 'pick any lane and drive at any speed' style of driving, and the people who insist on hanging right on my rear quarter.

agumonkey 6 years ago

There's also a new class of drivers, the new SUV owners. Most of them seemed to have bought it for safety and are still driving overly slowly no matter what.

hartator 6 years ago

Lexus drivers are the worst in the US.

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