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Knimrod
02-04-2006, 12:07 AM
Research on Guns and Road Rage
2/2/2006
John R. Lott, Jr.

There is a new paper that is getting some attention (http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18925373.800) that has just come out in the public health journal "Accident Analysis & Prevention." The paper by David Hemenway, Mary Vriniotix, and Matt Miller is entitled "Is an armed society a polite society? Guns and road rage." The paper is based on a survey of 2,400 drivers that the authors did. The survey asked respondents if they had made an obscene gesture to an opposing driver or whether they had aggressively followed another car. After that a series of descriptive questions were asked: gender, age, income, political views, urban/rural, and whether they have had a gun in their car at least one time over the last year. The authors make a simple comparison between those who have had a gun at least once in their car and those who didn't and say that the respective numbers are 23% and 16%. The authors imply that having a gun makes it more likely that one will engage in road rage.

There are multiple concerns with this analyis. There is not attempt to differentiate whether the person who had the gun in the car had it legally or not. No attempt to determine whether they had a gun when the rage occurred. While one regression with a few very basic variables was apparently run (but not shown), no explanation was offered for why such a limited set of control variables were used (e.g., why not trouble with law enforcement, education, income, smoker, race). Trouble with law enforcement (past arrests) would have been obvious (though it would have been even better if they had asked whether the person had convictions for felonies (I wonder why they didn't include that question)).

The paper also has some funny results. For example, Liberals are apparently much more likely to engage in road rage than conservatives and the difference is larger than the difference between those who did and did not have a gun at least one time in their car over the last year. This variable is apparently never investigated, but presumably they are also concerned about liberals being allowed to drive cars.

Finally, there are other very direct mesaures that indicate that people who have concealed handgun permits and who thus carry guns in their cars legally. For example, the fact that permit holders tend to be extremely law-abiding and lose their permit for violating gun regulations occurs for only hundredths or thousandths of one percent of permit holders.

I have asked the authors for their data, but we will see when and how quickly I get it.

Link to article (http://johnrlott.tripod.com/2006/02/research-on-guns-and-road-rage.html)

Flygirl
02-04-2006, 10:33 AM
The title of the paper appears to be an indication of the authors' agenda prior to conducting the research in that it is already negatively linking road rage and guns. This is bad research....typical of "the data didn't fit our analysis, so we threw it out." In addition, to be a truly academic research paper, there must be at least 14 words in the title. :) Something on the order of: "Road Rage": A Preliminary Investigative Survey and Anaylsis of Indicated Variables of Civilian Vehicular Accidents on State Highways Involving Firearms and/or Firearm Possession.

A few variables that need to be addressed: gender, married or single, age, time of day (rush hour?), weather, day (Friday, holiday weekend), type of vehicle (VW or SUV), car or truck, business or pleasure vehicle, etc.
If you need asisstance with data analysis (although I am not a statistical analyst), I'd be delighted. This could be fun!

Dan
02-05-2006, 12:58 PM
"David Hemenway"

All I need to know right there. He's an Arthur Kellermann type.

Quaamik
02-05-2006, 09:50 PM
One of the most obvious questions that should have been asked was: "Did you have a gun in the car during a road rage incident?" But that probably would have been a little too telling when they found fewer road rage incidents when people had guns with them at the time.

Knimrod
02-05-2006, 11:58 PM
The latest "study" on gun owners
February 04, 2006
The Liberty Zone

I recently had the displeasure of reading a paper about the latest study from David Hemenway, Mary Vriniotis and Matthew Miller. If those names sound familiar, it’s because these researchers from the Harvard Injury Control Research Center are well-known for ejaculating anti-gun propaganda under the guise of legitimate research. Hemenway and Miller are the team responsible for such gems as:

Firearms and Suicide in the Northeast -- a blatant attempt to blame the presence of guns on the deaths of people intent on taking their own lives;

Firearm availability and unintentional firearm deaths, suicide, and homicide among 5-14 year olds -- a biased effort to blame guns for accidents, suicides and homicides (for the children, of course); and

The relative frequency of offensive and defensive gun use: Results of a national survey -- their claim that using a firearm to intimidate or frighten (even when it’s in self-defense) is “socially undesirable.”

So it’s not surprising that Hemenway and Miller came out with yet another “study” that attempts to paint gun ownership as “socially undesirable.” But in the interest of fairness, I read their release: Is an armed society a polite society? Guns and road rage.

Several things (other than the authors’ history of bias against guns and gun owners) struck me. One was their blatant misrepresentation of the definition of road rage. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, road rage is defined as “an assault with a motor vehicle or other dangerous weapon by the operator or passenger(s) of another motor vehicle or vehicles precipitated by an incident, which occurred on a roadway.” Road rage is violent. It is an assault. It is dangerous, criminal behavior, according to NHTSA and Richard Wark, Roy Lucke and Richard Raub of the Northwestern University Center for Public Safety.

Meanwhile, experts define aggressive driving as behaviors involving cursing, yelling or gesturing to other drivers, speeding, improperly changing lanes and following too closely. NHTSA has modified their definition of aggressive driving to read, "When individuals commit a combination of moving traffic offenses so as to endanger other persons or property" (Aggressive Driving Enforcement Strategies for Implementing Best Practices 2000).

But Hemenway, Miller and Vriniotis make no distinction between aggressive driving and road rage, and as Wark and his colleagues note, “What is not clear… is whether the commonly held assumption that aggressive driving leads to road rage is valid. The literature does not show a clear linkage.”

Hemenway and crew asked four questions of their respondents:

1. Has another motorist made obscene or rude gestures at you?
2. Have you made obscene or rude gestures at another motorist?
3. Has another motorist aggressively followed your vehicle too closely?
4. Have you aggressively followed another vehicle too closely?


These four questions supposedly gave the authors an indicator of whether or not their respondents were more prone to road rage. Well, considering that these are indicators of aggressive driving, and not road rage, and that these are just two of the numerous indicators of aggressive driving, and that apparently no literature shows a causative effect between aggressive driving and road rage…

…the authors of the study have already undermined their credibility in my eyes.

But OK, let’s pretend that road rage and aggressive driving are, indeed, one and the same. What did the authors find?

They apparently found that a higher percentage of motorists who rode with guns in the vehicle made obscene gestures and followed aggressively. This apparently held true for both males and females.

But what they didn’t appear to ask is:

Is the firearm in the vehicle legally obtained?
Was the firearm used in the instances of road rage, and if so, how many times?

The vast majority of states in the U.S. have concealed carry laws. There is an abundance of Americans who have passed the background checks necessary to purchase a gun legally and carry it concealed. And yet, the media, whose motto is “If it bleeds, it leads,” seems to be ignoring the rash of road rage incidents involving firearms. Maybe because there is no epidemic of road rage incidents involving firearms? Maybe because concealed carry permit holders are generally very law-abiding, mature individuals?

As John Lott noted in his initial critique:


There is no attempt to differentiate whether the person who had the gun in the car had it legally or not. No attempt to determine whether they had a gun when the rage occurred. While one regression with a few very basic variables was apparently run (but not shown), no explanation was offered for why such a limited set of control variables were used (e.g., why not trouble with law enforcement, education, income, smoker, race). Trouble with law enforcement (past arrests) would have been obvious (though it would have been even better if they had asked whether the person had convictions for felonies (I wonder why they didn't include that question)).

If Hemenway and his colleagues wanted to draw a connection between road rage and firearm ownership, wouldn’t it have made sense to include a question about firearms use in actual incidents of road rage, instead of the mere presence of a gun in incidents of aggressive driving or rude behavior inside a vehicle?

Additionally, those who carry firearms in their vehicles or have concealed carry permits are a much smaller group than those who don’t. Therefore, even two or three temperamental troublemakers who admit to flipping their fellow motorists the bird during a long car trip could skew the results against gun owners in general.

This “study” is nothing more than a blatant attempt to tie the presence of guns and gun ownership to violence on the roads. The only problem is that these authors not only mischaracterized the behaviors that define road rage, they also drew no direct causative link between gun ownership and violent behavior on the road. They failed to prove that the presence of guns necessarily precipitates their use in road rage situations, although they’re quick to make offensive implications about the subject. “If someone is giving you the finger, it may be useful to have some sense of whether or not they have a gun,” they claim. They never directly state what they obviously allude to: that if you retaliate, you might get shot. They cannot make that claim, because they have established no factual evidence that points to this risk. However, they appear anxious to make that intimation.

“One would hope,” lament Hemenway and crew, “that those people with firearms in their vehicles would be among the most self-controlled and law-abiding members of society. Unfortunately, that does not appear to be the case.” Of course, had these “researchers” actually bothered to find out whether the gun was there legally, whether the people whom they interviewed were felons, or whether they had previous trouble with the law, maybe they would have found out that law-abiding citizens who carry concealed weapons ARE, in fact, some of the most responsible and peaceable people on the roads.

But perhaps those questions would not have given them the results they wanted.

Link to Blog (http://libertyzone.blogspot.com/2006/02/latest-study-on-gun-owners.html)