Cool, Now do cyclists.
With Saab gone, what are all the nice people driving these days?
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I know I’m going against the flow here, but perhaps the headline could more fairly be:
Some BMW drivers among 461 cars (of which the actual number of BMWs is not disclosed so is probably small) were jerks, if by jerk we mean they yielded a tiny bit less to pedestrians than other cars. P=0.03
Why yes, I’m a scientist not a copy writer, how’d you know? 
Oh, and there’s also this from the research article itself (but strangely lacking from any of the global reporting): “95% of the variability of yielding was caused by unobserved crossing-specific attributes.”
Which I translate as meaning: we don’t know why some people yield and others don’t.
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My dad, a former service manager for Mercedes, talked me out of buying the sweet little red SL that I’d always wanted just by rattling off the cost of various parts. His message was that I could afford to buy it, but couldn’t afford to own it. (Which was why I could afford to buy it in the first place.)
But then again, my ex-MIL bought a used 600SL for around $12k, and apart from gas mileage and tires, got a surprisingly good long term ROI. I still maintain that that was a stupid decision on which she got lucky, but holy christ, I didn’t complain that few times I got to drive that thing. What a decadent cylinder-to-seat ratio.
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Related joke:
Any time you feel down over wasting your life at a stupid, pointless, useless job, just remember there’s some poor bastard in Munich who designs turn signals for BMWs
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…and I came here to post that one.
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Subarus? Honda Fits?
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I remember making a comment on BB about Mercedes drivers a while back. Someone said it was just confirmation bias.
Ha ha last laugh etc.
Can confirm. I used to have a BMW and was more of an asshole at that point. Now I do not, and I am less of an asshole. They must be related! 
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As stated, it sounds stackable at first to me…
But if you want to be all Zenos’ paradox about it, it still only takes about $100k above that undefined n0 before chance of stopping drops to <5% and t doubt that M6/M8 drivers are plowing through 19 of 20 pedestrians in front of them. Hard to be mathy about something that’s a bit loosily goosily defined to begin with.
/drove a Renault LeCar once
//why yes, it was dangerous and awesome all at once
True, after we dented it a little, they refused to take it back for full deposit at the bottle depot.
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Older ones were extremely reliable. My brother has an 1989 E34 and it’s impressive that it still mostly works with very little servicing. Sadly I’ve heard that some newer ones are engineered to fail. For example I’ve heard that the timing chain sprocket can be only replaced with whole crankshaft, as they are a single part, making replacement way too expensive.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Lada Niva is a nice 4x4, parts are cheap and with that look nobody will steal it.
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Asshole cyclists are assholes, but simple physics means that they are considerably less dangerous assholes than assholes driving BMWs.
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I would be interested in the companion study where volunteers drive onto freeway entrance ramps and attempt to merge. I have a hunch that whether the freeway driver speeds up to block the volunteer drivers from entering or slows down to let them onto the freeway, will correlate.
yes, I was being <gesture variety=“jerk-off”>pedantic</gesture> about the difference between percent and percentage points
Well, this confirms my biases–I’m sold.
Also Audi drivers. Fuck them.
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I don’t use the original phrase any more, but every time I get cut off by a BMW, I do mutter, “OK, Beemer.”
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I’ve considered making up some magnetic silhouettes to afix to road signs. Specifically, to add “BMWs ONLY” to the right-lane-ends signs.
Late zipper merges aren’t that bad. When there’s enough cars that speeds are slow.
But when you cut over to the Douchebag Lane to zip past a few cars before it ends, well, that’s why we call it the Douchebag Lane.
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