[ExI] experiment regarding ethical behaviors vs status: was RE: Will robot cars be TOO good?

[spike]

Cool check this article:

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/02/shame-on-the-rich.html?ref=hp

I had a great idea, worthy of a nice science fair project.

Near my house is a freeway with a right-merge lane.  Drivers are given
plenty of warning that the far right lane is ending.  This gives them a
choice to match speeds with other traffic and merge early, thus extending
the time for their own trip but smoothing traffic.  These are the
cooperators.  They have the choice of speeding ahead in the empty right lane
up to the front of the line and stuffing their car ahead of other patient
drivers who are now well behind, but overall wads up traffic, so it
penalizes the cooperators twice.  These are the defectors.  

I might be imagining it, but I feel like I have observed that there a lot of
Porsche and Beemer drivers who are over-represented among the defectors.
Those particular makes stick in my mind; in general it seems like sporty
German cars are way over-represented in the defector class.  This defies
intuition, for one would think the driver in the ratty old pickup with the
gun-rack in the back window would be the defector: she can force her way in
up front with that 50 dollar rattletrap and you must let her in; she
probably doesn't have insurance, and one more dent on her rusty prolemobile
would scarcely be noticed.  But I seldom see gun-rack pickups do that
defector trick.  It's the shiny German buckmeisters who seem to defect. 

I would like to take some video of this phenom, which is a continuous
experiment that runs 24/7, and try to extract some useful data.

spike