ROAD RAGE & BUMPER STICKERS: Like Eggs & Bacon! Guns & Religion!Cigarettes & Pickup Trucks!

Yeah, in "America," BAD and STUPID THINGS come in two's.

Like fat slobs and NASCAR. Red states and ignorance. Republicans and
intolerance. McCain voters and Bush lovers.

Studies show that the more BUMPER STICKERS a driver has on his or her
vehicle, the more prone to ROAD RAGE and other driving crimes he/she
is.

True.

Next time you see some van or truck plastered with inane messages like
"Baby on Board," or "My Child Is an Honor Student at Billy Carter ES,"
might want to give that driver more room than you give your ugly
mother-in-law with bad breath!
-----------------------------
"Looking to Avoid Aggressive Drivers? Check Those Bumpers."

Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 16, 2008; A02


Three horrors await Americans who get behind the wheel of a car for a
family road trip this summer: the spiraling price of gas, the usual
choruses of "are-we-there-yet?" -- and the road rage of fellow
drivers.

Divine intervention might be needed for the first two problems, but
science has discovered a solution for the third.

Watch out for cars with bumper stickers.

That's the surprising conclusion of a recent study by Colorado State
University social psychologist William Szlemko. Drivers of cars with
bumper stickers, window decals, personalized license plates and other
"territorial markers" not only get mad when someone cuts in their lane
or is slow to respond to a changed traffic light, but they are far
more likely than those who do not personalize their cars to use their
vehicles to express rage -- by honking, tailgating and other
aggressive behavior.

It does not seem to matter whether the messages on the stickers are
about peace and love -- "Visualize World Peace," "My Kid Is an Honor
Student" -- or angry and in your face -- "Don't Mess With Texas," "My
Kid Beat Up Your Honor Student."

Hey, you clown! This ain't funny! Aggressive driving might be
responsible for up to two-thirds of all U.S. traffic accidents that
involve injuries.

Szlemko and his colleagues at Fort Collins found that people who
personalize their cars acknowledge that they are aggressive drivers,
but usually do not realize that they are reporting much higher levels
of aggression than people whose cars do not have visible markers on
their vehicles.

Drivers who do not personalize their cars get angry, too, Szlemko and
his colleagues concluded in a paper they recently published in the
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, but they don't act out their
anger. They fume, mentally call the other driver a jerk, and move on.

"The more markers a car has, the more aggressively the person tends to
drive when provoked," Szlemko said. "Just the presence of territory
markers predicts the tendency to be an aggressive driver."

The key to the phenomenon apparently lies in the idea of
territoriality. Drivers with road rage tend to think of public streets
and highways as "my street" and "my lane" -- in other words, they
think they "own the road."

Why would bumper stickers predict which people are likely to view
public roadways as private property?

Social scientists such as Szlemko say that people carry around three
kinds of territorial spaces in their heads. One is personal territory
-- like a home, or a bedroom. The second kind involves space that is
temporarily yours -- an office cubicle or a gym locker. The third kind
is public territory: park benches, walking trails -- and roads.

Previous research has shown that these different territorial spaces
evoke distinct emotional responses. People are willing to physically
defend private territory in ways they would never do with public
territory. And people personalize private territory with various kinds
of markers -- in their homes, for example, they hang paintings, alter
the decor and carry out renovations.

"Territoriality is hard-wired into our ancestors from tens of
thousands of years ago," said Paul Bell, a co-author of the study at
Colorado State. "Animals are territorial because it had survival
value. If you could keep others away from your hunting groups, you had
more game to spear . . . it becomes part of the biology."

Drivers who individualize their cars using bumper stickers, window
decals and personalized license plates, the researchers hypothesized,
see their cars in the same way as they see their homes and bedrooms --
as deeply personal space, or primary territory.

Unlike any environment our evolutionary ancestors might have
confronted, driving a car simultaneously places people in both private
territory -- their cars -- and public territory -- the road. Drivers
who personalize their cars with bumper stickers and other markers of
private territory, the researchers argue, forget when they are on the
road that they are in public territory because the immediate cues
surrounding them tell them that they are in a deeply private space.

"If you are in a vehicle that you identify as a primary territory, you
would defend that against other people whom you perceive as being
disrespectful of your space," Bell added. "What you ignore is that you
are on a public roadway -- you lose sight of the fact you are in a
public area and you don't own the road."

Szlemko said that, in an as-yet-unpublished experiment, he conducted
tests of road rage in actual traffic. He had one researcher sit in a
car in a left-turn lane. When the light turned green, the researcher
simply stayed still, blocking the car behind.

Another researcher, meanwhile, examined whether the blocked car had
bumper stickers and other markers of territoriality. The experimental
question was how long it would take for the driver of the blocked car
to honk in frustration.

Szlemko said that drivers of cars with decals, bumper stickers and
personalized license plates honked at the offending vehicle nearly two
full seconds faster than drivers of cars without any territorial
markers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...061501963.html

On 2008-06-16, Peetee > wrote:

> Studies show that the more BUMPER STICKERS a driver has on his or her
> vehicle, the more prone to ROAD RAGE and other driving crimes he/she
> is.

Nice troll... but IME bumper stickers often mean that the driver is
poorly skilled, self-centered, and will cause other drivers' blood
pressure to rise with their idiotcy and lack of concern for others.

The exception I noticed would be the brief use of "Ron Paul" bumper
stickers. Oddly enough I found that cars with these bumper stickers
tended to have drivers that kept right except to pass and practiced
other aspects of good driving that most americans can't be bothered
with.

> not only get mad when someone cuts in their lane

Because everyone should just bow down and give in to the aggressive
behavior of the lane cutter. How dare someone object to it! *snort*

> or is slow to respond to a changed traffic light

Because it's perfectly acceptable to sip your coffee, play with the
Ipod, respond to your email, or do any number of other tasks so long as
you sweak through on the yellow, but the people behind you get to wait
through an addtional cycle.... only a defective person would become
annoyed with this, they should be happy to wait extra cycles at every
traffic signal idling away the precious $4.25/gal juice. *snort*

> Hey, you clown! This ain't funny! Aggressive driving might be
> responsible for up to two-thirds of all U.S. traffic accidents that
> involve injuries.

I would say aggressive driving would be cutting other people off,
sitting at green signals so that you get through and other people don't,
and other behaviors that have negative effects on the people around you
for your own entertainment and sense of competition. Oddly, it's not
considered aggressive driving to block the passing lane, cut off other
drivers, and be a general ass on the road.... aggressive driving is to
have a 'bad reaction' to these acts. To be upset that someone puts you
in a danger or delays you out of their stupidity, selfishness, or just
plain game playing.

> "The more markers a car has, the more aggressively the person tends to
> drive when provoked," Szlemko said. "Just the presence of territory
> markers predicts the tendency to be an aggressive driver."
>
> The key to the phenomenon apparently lies in the idea of
> territoriality. Drivers with road rage tend to think of public streets
> and highways as "my street" and "my lane" -- in other words, they
> think they "own the road."

LOL. No, the drivers who think they own the road are the ones who block
the passing lane, cut other drivers off, sit on their cell phone at a
traffic light and then gun it through leaving everyone else behind for
another cycle... that sort of thing.

> Szlemko said that, in an as-yet-unpublished experiment, he conducted
> tests of road rage in actual traffic. He had one researcher sit in a
> car in a left-turn lane. When the light turned green, the researcher
> simply stayed still, blocking the car behind.

> Another researcher, meanwhile, examined whether the blocked car had
> bumper stickers and other markers of territoriality. The experimental
> question was how long it would take for the driver of the blocked car
> to honk in frustration.

Holy ****. Another stupid test of 'let's actively try to **** people
off' and then call them bad people if they get mad.

I got an experiment for these "researchers".... they can plaster their
vehicle with racial slurs and then drive to a neighborhood where people
will feel insulted by the slurs, pretend to have a break down and see
how people react.

It's a public place, they are behaving like assholes, gee... what might
be the result?

> Szlemko said that drivers of cars with decals, bumper stickers and
> personalized license plates honked at the offending vehicle nearly two
> full seconds faster than drivers of cars without any territorial
> markers.

Counter conclusion: People with personalized plates and the rest are
paying better attention than the others and thusly react faster.

As a real researcher ... anything that identifies one group
from another, can be twisted to support an instinct of greed
and survivial of one group at the expense of the other. That
instinct is so embedded, that one group can help another
group, and the group being helped can twist the motive of
the helper ... and eventually find themselves in a state of
war. That instinct blocks the helper group from ever taking
a proactive stance to begin with. We allow entire nations
to starve to death, because we fear the consequences of
helping them survive.

Now .. both of you ... are nothing more than that. Your
rationalizations are absurd and motivated. You are just
applying it to cars. May the Great Car in the sky send
both of you wives who like "cars".

johns

On Jun 16, 10:06*am, Peetee > wrote:
> Yeah, in "America," BAD and STUPID THINGS come in two's.
>
> Like fat slobs and NASCAR. *Red states and ignorance. *Republicans and
> intolerance. *McCain voters and Bush lovers.
>
> Studies show that the more BUMPER STICKERS a driver has on his or her
> vehicle, the more prone to ROAD RAGE and other driving crimes he/she
> is.
>
> True.
>
> Next time you see some van or truck plastered with inane messages like
> "Baby on Board," or "My Child Is an Honor Student at Billy Carter ES,"
> might want to give that driver more room than you give your ugly
> mother-in-law with bad breath!
> -----------------------------
> "Looking to Avoid Aggressive Drivers? Check Those Bumpers."
>
> Shankar Vedantam
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Monday, June 16, 2008; A02
>
> Three horrors await Americans who get behind the wheel of a car for a
> family road trip this summer: the spiraling price of gas, the usual
> choruses of "are-we-there-yet?" -- and the road rage of fellow
> drivers.
>
> Divine intervention might be needed for the first two problems, but
> science has discovered a solution for the third.
>
> Watch out for cars with bumper stickers.
>
> That's the surprising conclusion of a recent study by Colorado State
> University social psychologist William Szlemko. Drivers of cars with
> bumper stickers, window decals, personalized license plates and other
> "territorial markers" not only get mad when someone cuts in their lane
> or is slow to respond to a changed traffic light, but they are far
> more likely than those who do not personalize their cars to use their
> vehicles to express rage -- by honking, tailgating and other
> aggressive behavior.
>
> It does not seem to matter whether the messages on the stickers are
> about peace and love -- "Visualize World Peace," "My Kid Is an Honor
> Student" -- or angry and in your face -- "Don't Mess With Texas," "My
> Kid Beat Up Your Honor Student."
>
> Hey, you clown! This ain't funny! Aggressive driving might be
> responsible for up to two-thirds of all U.S. traffic accidents that
> involve injuries.
>
> Szlemko and his colleagues at Fort Collins found that people who
> personalize their cars acknowledge that they are aggressive drivers,
> but usually do not realize that they are reporting much higher levels
> of aggression than people whose cars do not have visible markers on
> their vehicles.
>
> Drivers who do not personalize their cars get angry, too, Szlemko and
> his colleagues concluded in a paper they recently published in the
> Journal of Applied Social Psychology, but they don't act out their
> anger. They fume, mentally call the other driver a jerk, and move on.
>
> "The more markers a car has, the more aggressively the person tends to
> drive when provoked," Szlemko said. "Just the presence of territory
> markers predicts the tendency to be an aggressive driver."
>
> The key to the phenomenon apparently lies in the idea of
> territoriality. Drivers with road rage tend to think of public streets
> and highways as "my street" and "my lane" -- in other words, they
> think they "own the road."
>
> Why would bumper stickers predict which people are likely to view
> public roadways as private property?
>
> Social scientists such as Szlemko say that people carry around three
> kinds of territorial spaces in their heads. One is personal territory
> -- like a home, or a bedroom. The second kind involves space that is
> temporarily yours -- an office cubicle or a gym locker. The third kind
> is public territory: park benches, walking trails -- and roads.
>
> Previous research has shown that these different territorial spaces
> evoke distinct emotional responses. People are willing to physically
> defend private territory in ways they would never do with public
> territory. And people personalize private territory with various kinds
> of markers -- in their homes, for example, they hang paintings, alter
> the decor and carry out renovations.
>
> "Territoriality is hard-wired into our ancestors from tens of
> thousands of years ago," said Paul Bell, a co-author of the study at
> Colorado State. "Animals are territorial because it had survival
> value. If you could keep others away from your hunting groups, you had
> more game to spear . . . it becomes part of the biology."
>
> Drivers who individualize their cars using bumper stickers, window
> decals and personalized license plates, the researchers hypothesized,
> see their cars in the same way as they see their homes and bedrooms --
> as deeply personal space, or primary territory.
>
> Unlike any environment our evolutionary ancestors might have
> confronted, driving a car simultaneously places people in both private
> territory -- their cars -- and public territory -- the road. Drivers
> who personalize their cars with bumper stickers and other markers of
> private territory, the researchers argue, forget when they are on the
> road that they are in public territory because the immediate cues
> surrounding them tell them that they are in a deeply private space.
>
> "If you are in a vehicle that you identify as a primary territory, you
> would defend that against other people whom you perceive as being
> disrespectful of your space," Bell added. "What you ignore is that you
> are on a public roadway -- you lose sight of the fact you are in a
> public area and you don't own the road."
>
> Szlemko said that, in an as-yet-unpublished experiment, he conducted
> tests of road rage in actual traffic. He had one researcher sit in a
> car in a left-turn lane. When the light turned green, the researcher
> simply stayed still, blocking the car behind.
>
> Another researcher, meanwhile, examined whether the blocked car had
> bumper stickers and other markers of territoriality. The experimental
> question was how long it would take for the driver of the blocked car
> to honk in frustration.
>
> Szlemko said that drivers of cars with decals, bumper stickers and
> personalized license plates honked at the offending vehicle nearly two
> full seconds faster than drivers of cars without any territorial
> markers.
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...08/06/15/AR200...

On Jun 16, 10:06*am, Peetee > wrote:

> "If you are in a vehicle that you identify as a primary territory, you
> would defend that against other people whom you perceive as being
> disrespectful of your space," Bell added. "What you ignore is that you
> are on a public roadway -- you lose sight of the fact you are in a
> public area and you don't own the road."
>
> Szlemko said that, in an as-yet-unpublished experiment, he conducted
> tests of road rage in actual traffic. He had one researcher sit in a
> car in a left-turn lane. When the light turned green, the researcher
> simply stayed still, blocking the car behind.
>
> Another researcher, meanwhile, examined whether the blocked car had
> bumper stickers and other markers of territoriality. The experimental
> question was how long it would take for the driver of the blocked car
> to honk in frustration.

1) if you are shopping in a supermarket and someone has a cart parked
crosswise in an aisle, blocking your path, would you not say "excuse
me," "pardon me," "may I get by" or some other similar phrase?

2) In what way is a quick tap of the horn at someone blocking your
path on a public street any different or less acceptable?

Until these "researchers" can answer these questions intelligently, I
will continue to consider anyone who utters the phrase "Woad
Wage!!!!!" to be a complete moron and not worth my attention.

nate

On 2008-06-16, johns > wrote:
> As a real researcher ... anything that identifies one group
> from another, can be twisted to support an instinct of greed
> and survivial of one group at the expense of the other. That
> instinct is so embedded, that one group can help another
> group, and the group being helped can twist the motive of
> the helper ... and eventually find themselves in a state of
> war. That instinct blocks the helper group from ever taking
> a proactive stance to begin with. We allow entire nations
> to starve to death, because we fear the consequences of
> helping them survive.
>
> Now .. both of you ... are nothing more than that. Your
> rationalizations are absurd and motivated. You are just
> applying it to cars. May the Great Car in the sky send
> both of you wives who like "cars".

No Mr. researcher... it's called effecient use of a resource. That
resource being the road. Americans have this stupid view that they can
be assholes to each other but if someone gets angry at being treated
poorly he's the problem.... it's the stupid infinite tolerance model. A
model where a person must just take abuse after abuse by aggressive and
self-centered people who think they should control the resource.

In Germany, IME people drive quite well. When the light turns green
they are paying attention and immediately start moving. 4 lane roads in
a small city in northern Germany following some road that was laid out
centuries ago flow more traffic than major arterials in cities of
similiar size in the USA, IME. What's the reason? In Germany driving is
taken seriously and people drive in a manner that is effecient for all.
In the USA, it's a system where people selfishly do whatever they feel
like.

A traffic jam on the autobahn is enjoyable compared to driving in and
around chicago.

On Mon, 16 Jun 2008 07:06:07 -0700 (PDT), Peetee >
wrote:

>Yeah, in "America," BAD and STUPID THINGS come in two's.
>
>Like fat slobs and NASCAR. Red states and ignorance. Republicans and
>intolerance. McCain voters and Bush lovers.

<< snip a bunch of crap >>


Hmmmmmm, outrageous topic in caps: check
excessive crossposting to unrelated groups: check
mindless blather about nascar, red states and republicans: check

Sounds like **** For Brains (a.k.a Speeders and drunk drivers are
murderers) has nymshifted.

** P * L * O * N * K **

--
My Labrador Retriever is smarter than your honor student.

On Jun 16, 10:43*am, necromancer
> wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Jun 2008 07:06:07 -0700 (PDT), Peetee >
> wrote:
>
> >Yeah, in "America," BAD and STUPID THINGS come in two's.
>
> >Like fat slobs and NASCAR. *Red states and ignorance. *Republicans and
> >intolerance. *McCain voters and Bush lovers.
>
> << snip a bunch of crap >>
>
> Hmmmmmm, outrageous topic in caps: *check
> excessive crossposting to unrelated groups: check
> mindless blather about nascar, red states and republicans: check
>
> Sounds like **** For Brains (a.k.a Speeders and drunk drivers are
> murderers) has nymshifted.
>
> ** P * L * O * N * K **
>
> --
> My Labrador Retriever is smarter than your honor student.

In the early sixties I had "Repeal Ohms law"

IOn the 1980s, a yellow diamond "Crab on Board"Now: AUH2O (My car is a
1964"

Next might be: "My grandson is "getting by" at Rasputan Prep"



Have a nice day

On Mon, 16 Jun 2008 07:55:51 -0700, Scott in SoCal
> wrote:

>
>Gee, here's a thought: instead of looking for "territorial markers,"
>how about you incompetent ****s IMPROVE YOUR DRIVING? Perhaps if you
>would stop cutting people off, sleeping through green lights, and all
>the other asinine moves you pull on the roads, people wouldn't get so
>mad at you all the time.

To improve their driving would require two things, Scott: brains and
class. Something that a large number of people on the road are sorely
lacking.....


--
My Labrador Retriever is smarter than your honor student.

On Jun 16, 9:41*am, N8N > wrote:
> On Jun 16, 10:06*am, Peetee > wrote:
>
> > "If you are in a vehicle that you identify as a primary territory, you
> > would defend that against other people whom you perceive as being
> > disrespectful of your space," Bell added. "What you ignore is that you
> > are on a public roadway -- you lose sight of the fact you are in a
> > public area and you don't own the road."
>
> > Szlemko said that, in an as-yet-unpublished experiment, he conducted
> > tests of road rage in actual traffic. He had one researcher sit in a
> > car in a left-turn lane. When the light turned green, the researcher
> > simply stayed still, blocking the car behind.
>
> > Another researcher, meanwhile, examined whether the blocked car had
> > bumper stickers and other markers of territoriality. The experimental
> > question was how long it would take for the driver of the blocked car
> > to honk in frustration.
>
> 1) if you are shopping in a supermarket and someone has a cart parked
> crosswise in an aisle, blocking your path, would you not say "excuse
> me," "pardon me," "may I get by" or some other similar phrase?
>
> 2) In what way is a quick tap of the horn at someone blocking your
> path on a public street any different or less acceptable?
>
> Until these "researchers" can answer these questions intelligently, I
> will continue to consider anyone who utters the phrase "Woad
> Wage!!!!!" to be a complete moron and not worth my attention.
>
> nate

I can't understand why, except in an emergency, anyone uses more thn a
tap on the horn. I've never seen anyone react in an unfriendly manner
to one of mine and they often give a wave of thanks or apology instead
of a single-finger salute that a blare might bring.
I react in the samwe way when I get a single tap.
I just do what is wanted, slowly, when I get a blare.