Video Games Linked To Reckless Driving 337
An anonymous reader writes "'A new study suggests video games that involve reckless driving may play out in real life. Researchers say their data should not be taken lightly since car accidents are the number one cause of death for teenagers.' Just a case of video games being used as a convenient scapegoat, or could there be some truth to this?"
Re:Kudos (Score:3, Insightful)
When I got involved in airplane modeling, I wrecked my first machine. So then I went out and bought an R/C simulator to practice at home, and about two months later I tried again.
Video gaming taught me how to fly
.
because before the computer (Score:1, Insightful)
because before the computer, there were never any reckless horse n buggy drivers
Bunch of idiots (Score:3, Insightful)
Why they don't go and study the effects of videogames in driving on the following subjects:
- improved reflexes
- risk control (you know what happens in the vg if you do this, so I'm not trying in real life)
- steering control (see above)
Instead they just want to go the "videogames are bad" route
Re:Kudos (Score:4, Insightful)
I, for one, remain skeptical. My wife doesn't play driving games of any sort and she's an awful driver. I don't play driving games either, and I'm about as boring of a driver as you'll find outside of rural Iowa. (I've been to rural Iowa, everyone drives exactly 3 miles under the posted speed limit.)
Can we do a controlled study on this? Subject some non-gamers to a large dose of GTA for 6 months and see how their driving changes with respect to a control group? Can we do actual science instead of bullshit stuides? Also, get off my lawn.
Re:New genre of games ? (Score:1, Insightful)
Who cares about who would play it? That's not the point. It's about who would BUY it, namely "concerned" parents who'd "gift" this to their children.
Who do you think buys all these inane "educational" games?
Re:New genre of games ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Kids are kids (Score:5, Insightful)
See? These cultural blinders we don't even know we're wearing. Only in America and related countries is it "traditional" for teenagers to be risk-takers. Decades of MTV have taken effect. I live inside another culture and here, teens are assumed to have other traits, none of which is a fondness for irresponsible behavior. In fact, the very idea of "teenager" doesn't really exist.
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers. Plato
Re:Kids are kids (Score:4, Insightful)
Because in western culture its not typical to get married early, there is a time where teenagers have a time to really decide what they want to do with their life and yes, some of it may involve -gasp- risk taking, but the entire mentality is born out of the fact that life expectancies have increased dramatically.
I'm sure in all of the other countries there are reckless kids but because they are poor they start families earlier, take more risky jobs, etc. and so its not considered to be "risky" when it really involves a high mortality rate.
In many other countries in the present and in the past, it used to be that you could die from pretty typical stuff like an infection, common illnesses, etc. since we've conquered most of that in the west with the exception of things like cancer, of course car accidents are going to be the leading cause of death because what else would a western teenager die from? We've thankfully ended the tyrannical practice of having a non-volunteer army so kids aren't being killed in wars, cured the vast majority of sicknesses, need to use very little hard labor for the vast majority of things, etc. so the common causes of death in other countries don't exist in the west for teenagers.
Catholic Priests (Score:3, Insightful)
See, I knew they'd find the cause of all this reckless driving. Now if they could only unearth what videogame causes all those Catholic Priests to become pedophiles. And which videogame turns ordinary muslims into suicide bombers. Then we'd have all the world's problems solved.