The higher the sticker price on the car, the more likely the driver is to threaten a pedestrian’s life.
University of Nevada researchers videotaped pedestrians navigating Las Vegas streets under what might seem like the best possible road conditions for walkers: a sunny day with great visibility, on an open road studded with 35 mile-per-hour speed limit signs and school zone warnings for a nearby elementary school, with the pedestrian crossing in a clearly designated mid-block crosswalk and wearing an easy-to-spot red t-shirt. Then researchers reviewed the tape and made a note of which drivers
still failed to yield to foot traffic until the last possible moment — and then they looked up the Kelley Blue Book value on the scofflaw drivers’ cars.
The result? Most drivers didn’t yield at all — and the more expensive the cars got, the more often the driver failed to hit the brakes. For every extra $1,000 on the sticker, the driver was three percent
less likely to let pedestrians pass safely.
That observation held true whether the pedestrian was white or black, female or male. Drivers were even less likely to yield for African-American participants — they only did so a shockingly low 25 percent of the time, compared to the 31 percent of drivers who braked for white participants. And they were least likely to yield for African-American men, confirming the findings of
previous studies.
The media promptly exploded with news of the study, and safe streets proponents across the country echoed the researchers’ speculation that the spendy-cars-drivers failed to yield because they “felt a sense of superiority over other road users.” But why, exactly, did BMW drivers feel superior to those poor schmucks out walking in 100 degree Vegas heat? Twitter users had one idea: because they’re all rich psychopaths who don’t care about poor people, and pedestrians are usually at least
perceived to be poor.
