'Fast and Furious' Movies Cause Rash Driving?

    • NYT News Service
    • Publish Date: Feb 2 2018 3:15PM
    • |
    • Updated Date: Feb 2 2018 3:15PM
'Fast and Furious' Movies Cause Rash Driving?

Watching such movies stokes ‘Need For Speed’ and reckless driving, US study suggests

Does badbehaviour in movies or other media lead people to behave badly? There’s plenty of research on the link between onscreen media and risky behaviours like unprotected sex, bingedrinking, fast driving and even violence. One large meta-analysis of such studies concluded that exposure to risk-glorifying media is associated with risky behaviours by people who consume that media.

But causality issues plague most studies in this area: People who engage in risky behaviours may prefer to consume risk-glorifying media. These studies also tend to measure attitudes in controlled lab settings rather than in real life. A more promising approach is to analyse natural experiments that show how people actually behave after being exposed to risk-glorifying media.

In this spirit, these writers analysed the impact of ‘The Fast and the Furious’ series, Universal Studio’s largest grossing franchise, with eight movies as of 2017. Most studies of media and behaviour look at risk-taking or violence more generally, but the “Fast and Furious” movies emphasise one particular type of risky behaviour: fast driving.

Over the years, various police departments in the US have increased traffic patrols near theatres during the period of the movies’ releases.

But what does the data show?
 
Using detailed traffic violationdata from Montgomery County, Maryland, we were able to examine all speeding tickets there from 2012 to 2017. This length of time allowed us to investigate the effect of three movies in the series. Looking at the 192,892 speeding tickets recorded, we analysed the average kilometres per hour over the speed limit drivers were charged with going on a given day.

We found a large increase in the average speed of drivers who received tickets on the weekends after “Fast and Furious” releases. Comparing the three weekends before each movie’s release with the three weekends after, we found that the speeds people were given tickets for increased almost 20%, to an average of 30km per hour over the speed limit, from 26kmph.

To check that these findings weren’t spurious, we looked at speeding tickets after the release of four movies in “The Hunger Games” series, another popular franchise in the same time period that didn’t glorify fast driving. Speeding didn’t go up.

We also performed a “falsification test”. When we looked at the dates of “Fast and Furious” releases and compared them with the previous year, when no movie was released, there was no effect on speeding.

The analysis was limited. Nonetheless, it suggests that watching Dom Toretto (played by Vin Diesel) and crew streak across movie screens can inspire moviegoers to do some dangerously fast and furious driving themselves.

What's your take? Let's know your views in the comments section below.


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Comments

Utkarsh Sachan Army Public School S.P. Marg,Lucknow

This kind of movies actually effects the people cycologically and encourage them to try to copy the hero. This kind of movies should not be movies after hollywood censor board and effect people''s mind

Utkarsh Sachan Army Public School S.P. Marg,Lucknow

This kind of movies actually effects the people cycologically and encourages them to try to copy the actor .This kind of movies should not be passed after hollywood censor board and effect people''s minds.

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