Study links video games to reckless driving
Inspired by last year’s death of Toronto taxi driver Tahir Khan, who was hit on a winding ravine road by a teenage street racer with a copy of the video game Need for Speed in his car, German psychologists have compiled the most extensive case yet that racing games cause reckless driving.
Playing such titles as Burnout, Midnight Racer and Need for Speed “increases risk-taking behaviour in critical road traffic situations,” the team led by Peter Fischer reports today in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied.
Writing about the Toronto case, in light of earlier examples of people reenacting video game scenarios to lethal effect, such as the Columbine school shootings, Prof. Fischer writes: “What if players of racing games similarly model their actual road traffic behaviour on their behaviour during these games?”
