Tech Shout!

A German study has suggested that people who play more of car-racing games are more likely to be aggressive behind the real wheel, and could also be involved in car crashes. In fact, the study also says that less frequent virtual racing was associated with more cautious driving.

The team of researchers was led by Dr. Peter Fischer, from Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich. Together, they questioned around 198 randomly chosen men and 92 women aged 16 to 25 years of age. These volunteered were questioned about their driving behavior, accident record and the extent to which they played racing games.

The volunteers were confronted with 16 videos of risky situations from the driver’s perspective, such as starting to overtake or approaching railway tracks with the barriers coming down. They were also given the chance to abandon the risky maneuver by pressing a key. The time that elapsed before they did this was recorded, and seen as an indicator of their willingness to take risks.

After adjusting for factors such as age, that could affect the results, the researchers concluded that frequent virtual racing was associated with more aggressive and competitive driving behavior, and a higher number of reported accidents. It was also noticed that the association was stronger for men than it was for women.

Finally, the researchers assigned 83 men and women to play either typical racing or neutral games on a Sony PlayStation.
To win the racing games, participants had to “massively violate” traffic rules. Those who engaged in the racing games were subsequently more likely to report thoughts and feelings linked to risk-taking.

The researchers wrote: “Our results pose the question of whether playing racing games leads to accidents in real-life road traffic.Playing racing games could provoke unsafe driving. Practitioners in the field of road safety should bear in mind the possibility that racing games indeed make road traffic less safe, not least because game players are mostly young adults, acknowledged as the highest accident-rate group.”

The scientists said they were especially concerned by the fact that children often started playing these games as young as 10.
By the time they were old enough to get behind the wheel of a real motor vehicle, they could be programmed for risk-taking on the road, they said.