How We Judge Drivers Differently Than Other People (And Why It’s Not Like We’re Killing Anyone)

Have you ever noticed how we change our behaviour when we are behind the steering wheel of a car? This 1950 Disney video may look like an exaggeration, but only a slight one.

In fact, Ian Walker and his colleagues put the hypothesis that we judge drivers differently than other people to the test with a series of questions. They asked 2,157 UK adults (so no petrolhead Germans or Americans…) to answer questions about behaviours, once framed as a driver of a car doing it and once framed as someone else doing it. It turns out that we are much more forgiving to drivers than to other people.

They call this effect “motornormativity” and it seems to be rooted in our perception of cars as an expression of our individuality and our association of cars with personal freedom to go wherever we want whenever we want. But comparing the answers below should show you that this motornormativity reduces the public’s willingness to increase the safety of cars or reduce their environmental impact. It stacks the cards in favour of the car industry and they don’t even have to lobby politicians to do that.

We judge drivers differently from other people

Source: Walker et al. (2023)