Bumper Stickers

People who put bumper stickers on their cars are more likely to experience road rage than other people, according to a new study reviewed by Nature.

Symptoms of road rage like tailgating or confrontations with other motorists has spiked in the past decade. In 2008, road rage will result in more than 25,000 injuries and 370 deaths, twice the number reported in 1995, according to the American Automobile Association. Of course, the vast majority of incidents that do not lead to injury are never reported, which means the real number of incidents is much higher.

The number of vehicles on US roads has rised 35% since 1987, but the road network has risen by only 1%. Psychologist William Szlemko and his colleagues at Colorado State University in Fort Collins postulated that like many other species, this overcrowding might exacerbate territorial aggression on roads. The team of researchers published their findings in a recent paper in the journal Applied Social Psychology.

The researchers surveyed scores of drivers about various aspects of their cars and driving habits and so forth. By using variables like "Use of vehicle to express anger" to scale the absense or presence of road rage in survey participants, the researchers discovered that drivers who had a larger number of personalized items on or in their car were 16% more likely to engage in road rage. The likelihood of road rage increased directly with the number of bumper stickers but not the content of a bumper sticker. In other words, "Save the Spotted Owl" was just as likely as "No Surrender" to lead to road rage.

"The number of territory markers predicted road rage better than vehicle value, condition or any of the things that we normally associate with aggressive driving," Szlemko said in an interview with Nature. "We have to remember that humans are animals too. It's unrealistic to believe that we should not be territorial."

In any case, any road rage could be cured by the bumper stickers below...

source: cleantechlawandbusiness.com