Watch out for rich people on the roads.
06 July 2020
So for years, as I have been trying to teach the CRjrs how to safely cross roads, I have often told them to watch out for BMWs and Lexuses because the rich jerks driving those cars don't stop for children or pedestrians. Mr. CR has suggested that this is perhaps an unfair blanket assertion.*
But yesterday I was happily reading an article titled "Why Are Rich People So Mean?" and I came across this little tidbit:
"Psychologists Dacher Keltner and Paul Piff monitored intersections with four-way stop signs and found that people in expensive cars were four times more likely to cut in front of other drivers, compared to folks in more modest vehicles. When the researchers posed as pedestrians waiting to cross a street, all the drivers in cheap cars respected their right of way, while those in expensive cars drove right on by 46.2 percent of the time, even when they’d made eye contact with the pedestrians waiting to cross."
HA! Vindicated! But wow, that is sad, to see it proven. Explains a lot, though.
Now go enjoy summer and if you're walking, for the love of all that's holy watch out for rich people on the roads.
*To be fair, I make a lot of those. Like the time the eldest CRjr asked why bike-riders often wear special clothing while biking, and I told him it was because they were usually wealthy people with a lot of money and time to blow on shopping**. I didn't think much about it until I heard him telling that little "fact" to his dad the next day, which got me in trouble, because Mr. CR is a much nicer and better person than I am, who doesn't want the boys to grow up to be bitter pills like their mother.
**Apologies if you ride a bike with the special biking clothes, or drive a BMW or Lexus. I'm a jerk.