Who is behind the steering wheel?

[Judd]

This reminds me of an article I read a long time ago that linked cats with bumper stickers with a greater likelihood of committing road rage.

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080613/full/news.2008.889.html

As someone with a bike that has a lot of stickers I wonder if I am more susceptible to bike rage.

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[Henry]

@Judd 144410 wrote:

This reminds me of an article I read a long time ago that linked cats with bumper stickers with a greater likelihood of committing road rage.

I’m thinking the rage might come when you try to pull the bumper sticker off the cat.

[mello yello]

I think it’s more about location than luxury/power combination. The people I have negative interactions with are usually in my neighborhood in Southeast. Downtown luxury vehicles are just as likely to stop as any others, but Arlington has the most drivers willing to be courteous to bicyclists.

[creadinger]

@Judd 144410 wrote:

This reminds me of an article I read a long time ago that linked cats with bumper stickers with a greater likelihood of committing road rage.

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080613/full/news.2008.889.html

As someone with a bike that has a lot of stickers I wonder if I am more susceptible to bike rage.

Wow, weird. Anecdotally I would have assumed the opposite. Ok, yeah there are 2-3 vehicles around here absolutely covered in bumper stickers that are driven by people who are absolutely ragey to begin with, but the majority of people with stickers have 5 or less and they’re perfectly normal. Right?

I would have assumed that the people who are much more prone to rageyness are the ones who would never besmirch their beautiful cars with a snarky 3-word phrase on a sticker (Mercedes, Audi, BMW, etc drivers). I wonder if the trend would be the same in a really wealthy area like Mclean and Potomac? Not too many Porshe, Mazeratti or Tesla drivers out in Fort Collins are there? It’s also a finding based on volunteers. Are the worst Type-A personalities likely to waste their time volunteering for things like this?

[Judd]

@Henry 144412 wrote:

I’m thinking the rage might come when you try to pull the bumper sticker off the cat.

Lol. This is probably the best typo that I have ever made.

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[Harry Meatmotor]

Related: a friend of mine did her Masters thesis in data science on something similar. She grabbed parking ticket records from NYC with a couple other mostly-public data resources (Edmonds for car value, taxi/for-hire licensing data, etc) and munged everything together to see if there was a correlation between vehicle value and parking infraction.

and, yes, there was a positive correlation between vehicle value and double parking among privately owned (non-taxi type or commercial) vehicles.

Not sure if she tried to publish her findings or not.

[Vicegrip]

I live in the center of Porsche, MB, Tesla, BMW land. For the most part the high end car drivers have been more courteous than standard mid level cars. The only cars I have had any problems with was a Ford cop car, a Chebby truck, a craptastic late 90s era minivan that clipped my arm with a mirror and a smattering of 3 foot rule violators. You might be able to find some correlation between wealth and locations but one location will not relate direct to another. High line car owners in DC area don’t act lihe high line car owners in S.F or L.A. as example. I don’t think you can draw an across the board line about cars and their drivers. You can’t even draw a wealth line between cars and owners and I am living proof. I own 3 Porsche sports cars and an MB sedan. :p

[huskerdont]

I think there would be a lot of confirmation bias on this one, and it would take a lot of data and research to get past the noise–it’s something that might not be possible to really measure. For my part, I am certain that SUV drivers are the worst, followed by high-end lines like BMW and Lexus (but not Mercedes drivers, who tend to be a bit better), based merely on personal perception. However, if I think about it more carefully, I can find lots of examples of bad behavior by drivers of compacts and subcompacts, so it’s likely just the case that I expect SUVs to be the worst so am confirmed in that every time they are. Does the behavior of a driver who has both a minivan and a BMW change when he or she switches cars?

“No matter what stupid sort of mission you’re on
Well, you’re not invisible inside your car” –Modest Mouse

[LeprosyStudyGroup]

It’s probably a factor of where I live and where I bike, but I’ve had a lot more bad experiences with people driving older beater cars/vans/trucks passing too close or honking and being generally unsafe or aggressive. I’ve wondered if someone in this area who feels marginalized themselves because of their economic status, might subconsciously exhibit bullying behavior or release aggression towards a momentarily even more marginalized person (the biker in the street) while driving because of that psychological disassociation one gets while driving a vehicle.

[FFX_Hinterlands]

I live near Herndon which has a huge population of people from Central America. This New American population is always the first to give you plenty of room when you are on your bike. I think it’s because so many of them walk and bike themselves, or have family members and friends who don’t have cars. Most of the raging, honking drivers are cutting through Herndon on their commutes from Loudoun County. They are in a hurry, local community be dammed. Ironically these commuters are going through Herndon to skip the tolls.

[Subby]

The only scientific data I can offer is that Prius drivers are the f%^$ing worst.

[mello yello]

@Subby 144434 wrote:

The only scientific data I can offer is that Prius drivers are the f%^$ing worst.

hey that’s my wife you’re talking about! let me get the soap…

The only scientific data that I can offer is that minivan drivers are the f%^$ing worst!

[dkel]

Around this region I always feel like negative interactions with drivers is a result of their general impatience and their ignorance of cyclists’ rights on the road. Put those two ingredients together and you always get honking, yelling, rude gestures, and unsafe passing. I’d like to think better driver education would go a long way to fixing this: if drivers understood that 1) time lost waiting to pass a bike safely is always easily made up in a car, and 2) bikes have a right to be in the street (and—more often than not—in the center of the lane), there would be no urge to get belligerent.

[rcannon100]

@Subby 144434 wrote:

The only scientific data I can offer is that Prius drivers are the f%^$ing worst.

Didn’t we already have this conversation like years ago. I thought we had achieved consensus that it was minivan drivers that were the worst. Particularly, you know, the ones with those horrid stick figures on the back window of all the people they have run down.

[streetsmarts]

Deep!

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