… but for every $1,000 more you spend on a car, the chance you’ll stop for a pedestrian goes down by 3%.
Really confused by this part. What is the n0 for where you start counting this and even then do that mean you only need to spend an additional 34,000 to never stop again?
/drives a Nissan SL, please and thank you.
// bring back the Geo Metro!
/// I loved that little gutless death trap.
File with similar “news” about popes and bears.
The interesting question is: do assholes choose to drive BMWs, or does driving a BMW turn you into an asshole?
It‘s both. Assholes are drawn to BMWs like moths to a flame, and exposure to BMWs inflates one‘s assholeness. (that is a word, I looked it up!)
They design the BMW that way. Just look at its face, and listen to the sounds it makes.
I see a lot of Teslas on my commute and not once have I seen a Tesla driver behave like an asshole.
They appear to drive more like Prius drivers only a bit more lop sided in the seat due to all that extra cash in the wallet.
Same, though with a lot less “drive 5 mph under the speed limit in the fast lane” than Prius drivers.
I’ll never understand why people regularly go so far into debt for their car. I recently got a 2000 Volvo S70, $2700 with just over 100k miles, dealer maintained all its life, the thing is pure joy to drive and is a tank. And I’m a firm believer that we normalize to whatever we drive and get bored with it after 6 months, so I might as well drive a piece.
First off, there are plenty of cars as safe as BMWs. But more importantly you probably would have done better buying something like a new Toyota (or even a used late model) then an old anything. Safety tech has improved so much lately. From consumer reports:
The older a car is, the more likely its driver will die in a crash, says a new research paper from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
It’s always reassuring when scientists prove the obvious, in this case that a brand-new car is safer than an old rust-bucket. But what’s not obvious at all, in this case, is how much more extra risk you take on with older-generation cars. It turns out that a driver of a car 18 or more years old is 71 percent more likely to die in a bad crash than the driver of a car three years old or newer. That’s pretty sobering—especially for parents looking to put their newly-minted teenage driver in an affordable used car.
But thanks for advertising a absentminded driver!
If anything I notice the opposite, I’ve found that Tesla drivers are more deferential, at least here in the SF Bay Area. My theory is it’s because there’s an odd dislike of Teslas among some people and the drivers seem a bit shellshocked. How dare some people drive something that’s a fraction as polluting as all the other cars on the road!
That applies to a ton of drivers then…Audi, Acura, Lexus, Infinity, Alfa Romeo, Cadillac, and Lincoln.
(I think that’s it)
Actually, while up here the NE, I would say expensive German cars are only a bit more likely to be jerks then the rest of the cars. The really aggressive drivers are mostly modded out Japanese cars. But the drivers that I find that really seem like they think they own the road are large pickup trucks and SUVs. They just dgaf who is around them.
Hey now, that’s unfair to Tesla owners. It’s not their fault the car behaved like that on autopilot, they were having a nap.
I live right down the street from a BMW dealer. There is a turn lane that leads into the lot. Not once, ever, have I seen a BMW use the turn lane. They all slam their brakes and cut across the turn lane from the regular road. I drive a truck that’s old enough to buy beer in the US. I have hit two…they never stop.
Hey now, that’d be socialism, restricting people’s ability to inflate the value of mid-range performance vehicles.
Clearly assholes choose BMWs, which is by far the biggest factor in the phenomenon.
But based on my very limited experience driving BMWs a couple of times, they also handle really well–certainly much better than my 10 year old Mazda. And at least for me, when I’m behind the wheel of a car that handles really well, I’m more likely to drive a notch more aggressively because I feel more confident about my ability to keep the car under control.
So I do think the car itself contributes a bit to the phenomenon, although not nearly as much as the underlying psychology of people who choose to spend lots of extra money on conspicuous luxury items.
Math fail. If you diminish an amount by 3% every step, you don’t get to zero in 34 steps. You don’t ever get to zero. You just get more infinitesimal numbers.
for all x, 0.97 ^ x > 0
Correct.
My last car was a BMW and I actually switched because of this exact phenomenon (and a really, really terrible and overloaded service dept in my area) to a Volvo.
My BMW was a great car, I really liked it, but I wasn’t a fan of the super-conspicuous luxury setup, and definitely people were judgier toward me while driving it. Since switching I get cut off less in traffic, pedestrians don’t act weird around me, and I feel more comfortable. Feels more ‘boring parent’ than ‘idiot techbro’.
My favorite car review of all time, about the predecessor to my Volvo:
“The engine moans like a retiree using a smart phone”. “Are you ready to commit to this level of uncoolness?”
