[ExI] types of cars and ethics

Eugen Leitl eugen at leitl.org
Thu Jul 26 09:17:06 UTC 2012


(take this as an anecdote, not a scientific study)

http://gizmodo.com/5927083/roadkill-experiment-shows-that-six-percent-of-drivers-are-sadistic-animal-killers

Roadkill Experiment Shows That Six Percent of Drivers Are Sadistic Animal
Killers

Jesus Diaz	

Our friend Mark Rober from NASA makes some awesome videos, but this science
experiment must be his best yet. He basically showed that six percent of the
drivers out there are sadistic animal killers.

This is what he did:

• He alternatively placed a rubber animal—and a leaf as a control object—on
the shoulder of a road: a turtle, a snake, or a spider.

• He watched one thousand cars pass by and annotated the drivers' reaction.

The results are quite surprising.

He found out that 94 percent of drivers did what anyone in their sane mind
would do: keep driving on their lane. Remember that the animals were on the
road's shoulder, way outside their driving path. They didn't pose any danger
whatsoever to the drivers' safety.

On the other hand, six percent went out of the driving lane to run over the
animals. Think about that: sixty out of one thousand drivers actually went
out of their way to kill a living thing that didn't represent any danger to
their lives—and risking their own lives in the process, no less. Six percent
were just cruel because they could be. For their own sadistic pleasure, I can
only imagine.

Mark says that "one thing that might explain the higher numbers here—in case
people question my methods—is that I used a tarantula." Apparently, people
seemed pretty eager about hitting a spider. "If you take that out it goes to
2.8% which is closer to the other turtle vs. snake studies I ended up
finding."

It is still quite a surprisingly high number. At least compared to a 2008
study using the Psychopathy Checklist, which discovered that 1.2 percent of
the US population were potential psychopaths. 1.2 vs 2.8 is a huge
difference.

Now, I'm not going to pull a PETA—I actually hate PETA—and say that the six
(or 2.8) percent are all potential psychopaths, but clearly these people have
some kind of mental problem. At the very least, their empathy circuits must
be pretty broken. Personally, I wouldn't like to be friends with any of them.

And I really don't care which kind of animal they ran over because all of
them were located outside of the lane and posed absolutely no danger to the
drivers. Needless to say, if a turtle or a snake is on the middle of your
lane, never risk your life to save it. Your safety must come first, but this
was not the case. This was all the contrary. And it's quite disgusting.

Jesus Diaz 7 days ago

Oh, and two more things:

• 89 percent of the 6 percent were SUV drivers.

• Mark repeated the study "on a smaller scale on a secluded road leading up
to a gun club by my house. Turns out, if you're a turtle, snake or tarantula,
your chances are almost (but not quite) double of getting run over there."

Like he says, correlation does not imply causation, but I'm sure you people
will have a lot to say about this.

But all this is not important. The important thing is: would you get out of
your lane to kill an animal for the sake of it?



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