Feb 09 2006
Road Rage Survey
I was sent a link to this article about a correlation between road rage and armed drivers.
GUN lobbyists like to repeat the quote often attributed to American writer Robert Heinlein, that “an armed society is a polite society”. But this is certainly not true for motorists.
A survey of 2400 drivers carried out by David Hemenway and his colleagues at the Harvard School of Public Health shows that motorists who carry guns in their cars are far more likely to indulge in road rage - driving aggressively or making obscene gestures - than motorists without guns. Some 23 per cent of gun-toting drivers admitted making rude signs, compared with 16 per cent of those who did not carry guns.
Lies, damned lies and statistics, no?
Thankfully Bookmoth has taken a closer look at the report, and released a critique of it here. I’m no expert, but even I figured the study was biased.
[Hat tip: Says Uncle]
What? A study on guns from Harvard, biased??? I’m sure it wasn’t part of the larger thesis that concealed carry permits are Baaaaaadd. Sorry, I’m a bit jaded today.
Hehe, Jaded? Nah…
The survey used for this report made me laugh. Let’s see, someone phones me out of the blue and asks if I own firearms, or if I travel with them in my car.
Assuming for a second that I’m not up to my usual tricks in trying to skew the results of any phone survey I don’t immediately hang up on, I’m unlikely to answer honestly as even idiots know that a pretext phone call can save a lot of legwork (even the bad guys, especially the bad guys these days).
Still, it looks like they got the result they wanted.