Michael Neeb asked people to estimate how fast they usually drive
if the posted speed limit is 55, those with a total sensation-seeking
score in the medium range of 20 said that they tend to respect the
posted speed limit. However, crank that sensation-seeking score up
to the mid-30s and suddenly you have a different story. When the
sensation-seeking score was 34, people reported zooming at 75
miles per hour.^2 What is it that drives sensation-seekers’ pedal to
the metal? High sensation-seekers find thrill and adventure in
speeding, following the car in front of them too closely, and other
risky driving behaviors.
One self-identified sensation-seeker, Sue, explained that
driving fast was fun and made her feel more alive. Sue said that
her friends often made fun of her car. It has so many dents and
scratches that you might expect a crash test dummy to emerge from
the driver’s side. Sue had been in several fender benders but assured
me that she was a skillful driver – especially when she was driving
fast.
“All my friends say that I drive like a race car driver,” she
explained. “I feel like I actually drive better when I’m not necessa-
rily following all the rules. One thing I realized is that I love curves.
I really like to start in one lane and then to change across three
lanes of traffic if there’s an opening. What I like about it is that I feel
extremely focused. Even when there’s a close call...I feel like it’s
an accomplishment.
“I like speeding. I really like weaving in traffic. I like how
smooth it feels and how focused I am. I like getting ahead of the
cars, it’s like a game. I take turns very quickly. I pretty routinely run
yellows. I think it freaks people out.”
I bet. It would freak me out, and that’s because I have a very
different risk tolerance than Sue does. All this time I figured when
I saw someone cut across three lanes they must have suddenly
realized that they needed to be three lanes away. It never occurred
to me that for some people, driving is a game.
Even the best drivers might admit that driving is never
completely safe. Not much is. We face risks all the time. As everyday
risks go, driving is objectively a big one. We routinely get into
a large metal object on wheels, operated by our hands and feet,
propelled by an over-powered motor that can easily go twice as fast
as the speed limit, on narrow patches of road with only three feet of
space on each side. We do so amid scores of other people doing the
same thing, many of them pressed for time and distracted by140 / Buzz!Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSF Library, on 11 Nov 2019 at 14:20:10, subject to the Cambridge