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news
Cars on the A4 at Brentford (copyright Simon MacMichael).JPGBritons have in-built acceptance of driving's dangers, study suggests
A study has shown that people tend to view driving-related dangers differently to if they were caused by something other than cars.
The latest research by Dr Ian Walker, an environmental psychology professor at Swansea University, found that British people are more accepting of issues and dangers caused by motor vehicles that they otherwise would not be accepting of elsewhere.
We have a new study out!
The short version is this: "Car Brain" - the cultural blind spot that makes people apply double standards when they think about driving - is real, measurable and pervasive.
Read on for more details... 1/14 @SwanseaUni @UWEBristol @EdNapierTRI pic.twitter.com/oZKi8cZhXi
— Ian Walker (@ianwalker) January 17, 2023
Describing the attitude as "motonomativity", in the paper 'Motonomativity: How Social Norms Hide a Major Public Health Hazard', Walker along with co-authors Alan Tapp and Adrian Davis suggest that the "motonormative thought style is as endemic amongst government and the medical profession as in the general population", with potential implications for policy.
By randomly assigning a pool of 2,157 people (drivers and non-drivers) one of two sets of questions (near identical, just with a couple of words edited to make relevant to a driving or non-driving-related risk) the rearchers were able to determine "unconscious biases due to cultural assumptions about the role of private cars".
For example, while 75 per cent of people agreed that 'people shouldn't smoke in highly populated areas where other people have to breathe in the cigarette fumes', only 17 per cent agreed with the same statement changed to 'people shouldn't drive in highly populated areas where other people have to breathe in the car fumes'.
Likewise, 37 per cent believed the police needed to take action if someone left their belongings in the street leading to them being stolen, but 87 per cent agreed with the word 'belongings' replaced by 'car'.
While 61 per cent of people agreed that risk is a 'natural part of driving', just 31 per cent agreed that risk is a 'natural part of work'.
Here's the full set of answers. As you can see, responses could change dramatically when driving was mentioned. All except Question 2 were hugely statistically different.
This doesn't make sense! The principle is the same in both forms of each question; only context changes 6/14 pic.twitter.com/baivf0tR2o
— Ian Walker (@ianwalker) January 17, 2023
"It is nonsensical to say that making people breathe toxic air is a problem when it comes from a cigarette, but making people breathe toxic air is fine when it comes from a car," Dr Walker said.
"The underlying principle is the same, but people in our study were not using the same standards when they judged the two things.
"It's long been suspected that people can slip unconsciously into using different standards when they think about driving, leading them to commit a fallacy known as 'special pleading'. Our study was intended to reveal this phenomenon and show just how substantial these effects can be."
Co-author Dr Davis also explained that it was not just a problem seen in the driving population of the research.
"When we pulled out just the people in our survey who didn't drive, we saw that even these people were using different standards when the questions asked about driving," he said.
We end with a call for policymakers to recognise their unconscious and institutional biases and to implement mechanisms to overcome them in planning and health decisions.
You can read the full paper here for free https://t.co/fl6CmfS94V
Thanks for reading! 14/14
— Ian Walker (@ianwalker) January 17, 2023
"Their answers tended to echo what the drivers were saying, meaning it's not even simple self-interest at work. It's got to be something deeper, rooted in our culture."
And commenting on the same bias slipping into the minds of policy makers at government level and within the medical profession, co-author Tapp explained one example of an implication for policy.
"If you asked a politician whether a new hospital should be inaccessible to one-fifth of the population, obviously they'd say 'no'," he suggested.
"Whereas if you asked that same politician whether a hospital should be built on the edge of town, it's likely that many wouldn't see the problem, if they have a form of this mindset we're looking at. But in practice, having the hospital outside town is not that different from making it inaccessible when a fifth of households don't have a car."
Professor Walker added: "Every decision maker needs to get used to asking themselves, 'What's the underlying principle we're considering here, and would I still be happy with it if we were talking about something other than road transport?"
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
Latest Comments
- GMBasix 12 min 23 sec ago
So, it seems we're all agreed. Based on the story as reported here (and let's acknowledge a degree of latitude for those elements of what was said...
- chrisonabike 27 min 37 sec ago
They give the figures for numbers of all casualties so should be possible to work this out?...
- Pub bike 33 min 46 sec ago
I reported a car going through a red light not long ago and the Met appear to have acted upon it....
- GMBasix 36 min 40 sec ago
But don't forget to correct for altitude.
- chrisonabike 4 hours 34 min ago
Also don't forget - Sustrans are a charity *....
- chrisonabike 4 hours 46 min ago
Yes ... but (just due to the large numbers of people affected) this likely would only proceed in the UK at a very ... cautious ... pace....
- EK Spinner 5 hours 3 min ago
Arsehole in the van not with standing, how did they manage to get a risk assessment allowing a race (a group not a TT) group to be competing on ...
- RafaDy 4 hours 59 min ago
I think reviewer completely missed the point here trying to match bike's name with what it can do. Ribble is namin git's bike weirdly, the...
- Moist von Lipwig 8 hours 24 min ago
Bit of googling gone wrong in the article - the JAT is the Junction Assessment Tool, the Joint Approval Team appears to be a coutner terrorism...
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43 comments
I suppose this part of cutting red tape * but what other industries would you reduce testing ?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64318141
AA president Edmund King said the MoT "plays a vital role in ensuring that vehicles on our roads are safe and well maintained".
"With one in 10 cars failing their first MoT, we strongly discourage the government from extending a car's first MOT to the fourth anniversary due to road safety concerns," he added.
* vital standards to most people
I'm amazed it's only 1 in 10 tbh. I would have expected that more vehicles would fail on tyres, brakes and other consumable-type areas.
I'd hope that fleet vehicles would be maintained, then 90% (I believe) of new cars are via some leasing scheme, so that would either have servicing built in or require users to maintain it on pain of financial penalty at the end of the agreement. So 1 in 10 seems ok to me.
Organisations are planning for various impacts of the cost of living crisis... missed mortgage/credit payments, cold related rise in health issues, education impacted by hunger etc.
One area that will also be on dashboards as a potential risk is an increase in traffic incidents as people put off or cancel completely necessary vehicle maintenance. It won't be seen as a priority.
It's interesting to consider why motor transport has gained it's position as a necessary evil.
If you unwound our dependence on transport, what else would you have to unwind? My guess is the fundamental is population. That is another unthinkable thing, that humanity should strive to reduce human population, after all is the idea of a planet contentedly populated by say, 500,000,000 people rather than 8 billion impossible to conceive (oops!) of? Is every sperm sacred? What factors drive our cultures to shy against population reduction?
That's the elephant in the room. I am in my forties, the global population when I was born was approaching 5bn, today we have pushed past 8bn. That's a huge increase in a short time of human history that spans what, 200k years?
People live differently in the modern world. Few jobs are local, company changes and career progression can end up taking you futher afield. They have for me, and moving closer isn't ideal for a number of reasons. I mix train and cycling but that isn't possible for all people or situations.
Cars, traffic and much more are just a symptom of the above points. As much as people understandably here love to tout the "bike is best" matra, but it really isn't. It is a perfectly viable option and is arguably best for some people, and/or some journeys but by no means "THE BEST". Ultimately the car will stay, it will shift towards electric as will much else like household heating and power generation itself will become greener with renewables and nuclear, but with growing population what really is best is a functional, affordable and reliable public transport system preferably that accomodates cycling so the public can use cycling to complete their journeys rather than drive and park at the train station etc.
Which reminds me I must fill out that southeastern feedback form on their unmittigated disaster of a new timetable.
Yet another example of a seemingly driverless vehicle highlighted by Ned Boulting this morning, apparently before being aware of the research:
The 'vehicle' was a van being driven in Bristol with no tyres.
Yes, you read that correctly, NO TYRES. In fact, it looks like there were no wheels!
Science fiction of the past century-and-a-half has been full of evil geniuses or alien overlords inventing mind-control rays to turn the human race into obedient slaves or mindless beasts. Meanwhile, the motorcar has quietly got on with doing something approaching that in reality.
It has trained us to be selfish. It has isolated us from our neighbours and our communities. It has conditioned us to care less about loss of human life if the cause of death comes with cup holders and leather seats. It has programmed us to accept the destruction of the natural world by industry because in return we get a cool toy to play with that goes vroom-vroom, and a status symbol to boost our egos. It gives us a sense of control, with all the speed and power of an internal combustion engine at our command, yet because so many have bought into the same dream, the reality is traffic jams and hunting for parking spaces. Along with mortgages, car payments trap people into jobs they hate, in turn making them even more likely to lash out at some perceived slight on their commute home, say by a cyclist who appears freer than them.
I'm not saying that Karl Benz was an evil genius bent of turning the human race into selfish assholes too addicted to convenience to see that they're destroying their own planet and killing people. He couldn't know the ultimate effect of his cool new toy that went vroom-vroom. What I am saying is that if such a fictional evil genius existed in real life, they couldn't have invented anything more effective at achieving their goal than the motorcar (although the invention of social media is new candidate that may be just as bad.)
Hear hear. If an evil genius wanted to inflict as much harm as possible to the human race as a whole, I don't think anyone could come up with something as harmful as the motorcar.
Even the atom bomb doesn't come close.
I'd say that Capitalism in general has produced the most harm. It ensures that the most selfish, psychopathic people get to have the most power and influence whilst also rewarding people for exploiting resources as quick as they possibly can.
But but whatabout the commies?! If you say anything against capitalism you're directly supporting Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. /s
[/quote] But but whatabout the commies?! If you say anything against capitalism you're directly supporting Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. /s[/quote]
I like to explain that I'm not against capitalism just consumer capitalism. That confuses them.
The motorcar has turbocharged capitalism, and vice versa. Both have become bloated, gross, and obscene distortions of their original forms, as a result.
Whether nuclear weapons or the internal combustion engine take the top spot for worse human invention is debatable. Arguably, nuclear weapons ended WW2 and have prevented another war on the same scale happening since. But there are at least a couple of maniacs who could invalidate that argument tomorrow, with a press of a button.
It is also arguable that WW2 wouldn't have been quite the conflagration that it was without the internal combustion engine. It is, after all, very hard to blitzkrieg with trains and bicycles. Plus one of the sweeteners the Nazis used to get the support of the German people was sleek new "wagens" for all the "volks" (although, like all populists, they failed to deliver.)
Somebody will be along shortly to explain how nuclear energy has provided unmatchable benefits for humanity that have made nuclear waste, leaks and disasters, along with the ever-present threat of the annihilation of the human race, a price well worth paying.
If only the harm from motoring were as well managed as the harm from nuclear energy!
To make it a fair comparison, we'd need nuclear disasters on the scale of Chernobyl (which is estimated to have resulted in 4,000 deaths) 10 times per year. And that's just for US road deaths (42,915 in 2021 ; US Department of Transport).
But you're right, perhaps they will pick nuclear as their next false-equivalence.
(Edited for error)
Initially I was thinking great study backs up what I suspected, then looked at the question sets and realised I was falling for confirmation bias.
Whilst I suspect the proposal is valid that people do percieve driving dangers differently - not sure this study is that reliable in terms of providing evidence, the question sets may on the face of it appear similar, but surely even a layperson like me can see that the majority of questions are not really equivalent, many take the form of compare activity. First question compares driving with smoking - many see driving as an essential (neccessary evil?) as long distance travel, goods delivery etc is seen to rely on driving (add in the lack of good public transport and safe cycling infrastructure!) whilst smoking is not an essential activity and purely a personal choice.
Comes across as junk pseudoscience in my opinion, still in todays fake news society why bother with the hard work of deriving a valid set of questions.
Can you clarify what the point of your comment is please, because I don't understand it. Genuine question :).
You say the study is not reliable, but go on to say that driving is essential, even using the term 'necessary evil' and compare it to smoking as 'not essential'.
Your opinions seem to agree with the point of the study - that driving is seen as a necessary activity and as a result gets a free pass from the majority because it is considered a 'necessary evil'.
You've said it's junk pseudoscience, but also seem to agree with its findings.
its basically what I was trying to say yesterday, though I couldnt remember the confirmation bias thingy
its simple, do people in Britain normalise the dangers of driving, as a statement I think we or at least the majority agree they do
but does this study prove that, No.
Why ? because the study set out only to prove the statement was true and looks to have picked a set of questions that will guarantee you can draw a conclusion that people normalise the dangers of driving through it
it didnt set out to test through a set of random situations posed in a survey of questions, what peoples attitudes to driving were, and that they have normalised the dangers of driving.
and I think thats a very distinct & separate thing.
I agree that the questions could be better and it'd be good to see more than just two options for each question (people could be provided with different sets of the questions to see how much variance there is in non-car topics). However, when you say "many see driving as an essential...", you're confirming the point of the study which is that people's views on motoring are skewed.
Hmm no - I suspect (opinion not backed up by scientific evidence) that we do have a societal bias towards motoring.
My point is that I believe this study sits in the opinion category and not the scientific evidence category.
I don't believe the questions from the first set (relating to driving) always equate to the questions in the second set, driving is a method of travel - travel can often be an essential activity, whereas drinking and smoking (two of the questions) are never essential activities, that in itself will lead to a different response.
Another question about theft of car vs belongings - well cars are big, heavy and come with security features, belongings could just mean you left a bag outside your house and is an easy to take item - so again differences in response are to be expected.
Questions B seems to be the only one where there is a level of equivalence and the response demonstrate no bias! - but this can probably be down to respondents identifying chef and delivery driver as "others" and therefore not allowing any relaxation in standards.
Question C comes close to equivalence - but workplace is probably identified as an outside responsibility (company/employer) whereas any who drive and respond will see this as their own area of responsibility and thus accept a higher level of self imposed risk vs an externally imposed risk.
So even though I think as a society we need to tackle car dependency and reduce usage whilst promoting active and public transport I strongly believe we need valid supporting evidence to back up our arguments as poorly worded questions like these can easily be picked apart by the pro-motoring lobby and therefore weaken rather than strengthen the position
Question B does demonstrate some bias, but I'd like a larger sample set to determine how reliable it is.
I agree about the car vs belongings question being a poor choice as a car is usually more expensive than other belongings. I mentioned on the forum thread that it would be better to have a question about partially blocking pavements with parked cars vs parked bikes.
I think there's ways that the study could be improved, but it is at least scientific in that people can easily replicate it. Better questions and a larger sample size could put it on a more sound basis, but I personally have no doubt that society is car obsessed as I see it every day.
Hmm they may have applied a scientific process in selecting random responders, applying statistical analysis to the results etc., and ask the same questions you may get similar results - but if the questions are flaky!!
Bit like the proverbial sausage machine - you tip ingredients in the hopper - turn the handle and it minces and then squeezes the result out in a tubular skin. Feed in horseshit and turn the handle - you will get something that looks just like a sausage - but I am not about to eat it!!!
Or more succinctly garbage in garbage out
This question may actually show up the problem. Many drivers are working! Not just delivery drivers and lorry drivers but anybody that is going about their business (eg reps). If a rep has an accident in his car is it dealt with in the same way as if a forklift driver does? I don't think so... but may depend on the company. I would even suggest that this may be because the company has a duty of care to everybody on their site whereas they don't feel that duty of care to random pedestrians and cyclists.
These academics have put into words what many of us can see and experience every day. Sometimes, as I cycle past queues and queues of hardly moving vehicles, I think 'why do you do this'? This is abnormal not normal. To accept being so passive, to not challenge the fact that you are hardly moving. And it's not doing you any good and it's costing you money.
It's worse than that, they're not doing others any good either and it's costing us all money to subsidise them and clean up after them.
Just another study aimed at putting more damn cyclists on the road to get in my way while I'm rushing to the bike park in my new Grenadier!
Dr Walker should do a study of Lancashire Constabulary traffic officers, because they definitely think the same way- 'oh!- everybody does that'- RLJs, no MOT, no VED etc. The almost complete absence of traffic policing up here must have led to many disasters which they have then covered up. This is one of a series of stills from an immaculate video of the female driver of Porsche Cayenne KD10 WER speaking into and staring at a mobile phone while driving on the A6 at 40mph, today. I know the exact time when she passed me was 12:36:59 GPS time, which is within 1 second of my phone network time. Are LC going to do anything about this? Are they hell!
Cycling Mikey has it easy with the Met- they even spare the time they could be using to forgive colleague rapists and murderers to prosecute 'phone drivers' who are stationary in a queue! The video will be on UpRide when they get round to approving it- at the junction of the A6 and B6430 south of Catterall
Dan - you know we have 86 comments and counting on the forum about this one?
He's trying to nick your page clicks
Road.cc has moved on from posting articles that tangentially feature cycling, and is now posting articles that make literally no mention of cycling in them. At no point in the article do any of the words cycling, bicycle, bike, etc., appear. Utter shite
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