Do you love to play crash-and-bang car-racing computer games? Studies by researchers at the Allianz Center for Technology in Germany and researchers at Munich’s Ludwig-Maximilians University show that computer games featuring the thrills and spills of car racing could be contributing to the cause of real-life road accidents.

The two studies found a consistent relationship between dangerous driving in the virtual world of video screens and aggressive feelings and actions behind the real wheel.

The first study questioned 198 randomly chosen men and 92 women aged 16 to 45 about their driving behavior, accident record and the extent to which they played racing games.

After adjusting for factors that could affect the results, such as age, researchers found that the frequency of playing racing games was positively associated with competitive driving, obtrusive driving, and car accidents; a negative association with cautious driving was observed.

In the second study, men who played even one racing game took significantly higher risks on a computer simulator of critical traffic situations than those who played a game that did not involve driving.

The research was published in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Experimental Psychology.

Since racing games are becoming more and more realistic, it activates feelings of arousal and excitement which often lead to increased risk taking. In short, most actions in racing games imply a very high risk of having an accident or severe crash in a highly realistic virtual road traffic environment. “We conclude that playing computer games could provoke unsafe driving,” the researchers said.

“Practitioners in the field of road safety should bear in mind the possibility that racing games indeed make road traffic less safe, not least because game players are mostly young adults, acknowledged as the highest accident-rate group.”

The scientists said they were especially concerned by the fact children often started playing the games as young as 10, and could therefore be programmed for risk-taking when they start to drive for real. “Kids play them very often, and there really has been no research on the effects of the games,” Fischer said. “Our results indicate that risk can be increased.

While there has been no research on the effects of the games, the studies here, indicate that risk can be increased by playing racing games.

Up to this date, the effects of the computer games remain an area of debate and a challenge to many researchers. Many believe that games can give you positive and negative effects. But as to what kind of games can give positive or negative effects, that remains a question.

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Entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 11:51 pm under Technology.

Read more entries by Ruben Francia.
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