Bad drivers don’t think they’re bad: What Twitter tells us about road rage

(credit: Getty Images | Spencer Platt)

Driving a car is risky business. It's true that deaths on our roads continue to decrease over time. But it's a good thing our cars are getting safer because it looks like we're crashing them more often. In 2014, more than 2.3 million people were injured on the roads in the US, a slight bump from the year before. In total, vehicle crashes actually increased by almost eight percent compared to 2013.

That's because people continue to do stupid things behind the wheel, like Snapchatting their top speed. In fact, drivers who repeatedly engage in dangerous behavior while driving—drinking, speeding, tweeting, etc.—are over-represented in car crashes, suggesting that there's a minority of irresponsible people out there who are a menace behind the wheel. Researchers at McGill University in Montreal, Canada have attempted to discern why these subsets of risky drivers continue to misbehave.

The research, published in PLOS ONE, suggests this trend might be a classic case of Dunning-Kruger in action. Or in the words of lead author Thomas Brown, "surprisingly, these drivers usually don't consider themselves as risk takers. If drivers don't believe they are risky, they will not accept the need to change. On the other hand, if we and they don't understand their behavior, how can they be expected to change it effectively?"

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