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Sorry, but the study sounds like a total load of bollox to me (+ its in the Daily Mail).

For instance, check this extract out:
"The more expensive their car, the wealthier they were assumed to be."

As an "assumption" - that is totally flawed rubbish. I used to do door-to-door sales on various estates where people generally have similar sorts of income. Some people would have flashy cars, other people would spend that same money on their families, a caravan etc and be happy with a beat up volvo. Some people spend a lot of their money on flashy stuff; some don't. Likewise, plenty of wealthy people drive ordinary cars, rather wanting to spend their money on a nice house.

"Those in the flashiest cars were four times as likely as those in old bangers to cut up other vehicles by barging their way across the junction, the American journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports."

A flashy car is much more likely to be driven by an arrogant c***. So, all this proves is that people in flashy cars are more likely to cut up other traffic because they are more likely to be driven by arrogant c***s.

I'm absolutely amazed that Berkley university is publishing such drivel based on flawed assumptions. Flashy cars DO NOT necessarily mean wealthy. Flashy cars DO MEAN arrogance.

If you think there is no positive correlation between wealth and how expensive a car you drive, you must be more stupid than you consider this study to be. Or just trolling...

And what about all the other parts of the study? They weren't using cars as a proxy measurement for wealth.

This is just confirming what is plain common sense. We all know rich people are more arrogant and selfish - that's how they get so rich in the first place and how they maintain that wealth.

>> If you think there is no positive correlation between wealth and how expensive a car you drive, you must be more stupid than you consider this study to be. Or just trolling...

There's a positive correlation between hospitals and sick people too. More sick people in a hospital than out. Therefore, we can assume hospitals make people sick.
Just because there is a correlation, doesn't mean there is a cause and effect idiot.

Yes, there is a correlation between wealth and how expensive car you drive.
There also is a correlation between how much a wanker you are and the %age of your income / and borrow money you are willing to pay on looking flash in a nice car, suit, and iPhone (whilst living in a council house and dodging 5 credit card repayments).

Nice cars are driven by wealthy people
Nice cars are driven by poor people who borrow lots of money and spend it on a flashy car.
Crap cars are driven by wealthy people who are conservative with their money.
Crap cars are driven by poor people who don't borrow lots of money beyond their means.

The only cause and effect I see is that being a wanker means you must have a flashy expernsive car. If that means living beyond your means then, for these people, they do it.,

I think you are just trotting out the "correlation is not causation" meme without really understanding it, and why it isn't relevant here. If we were claiming that driving an expensive car made you rich, it would be a relevant argument, but we're not. If you are rich you will most likely buy an expensive car because it is more comfortable, more reliable, better acceleration, you can afford the increased fuel, etc.

Most people just plain can't afford a posh car, not matter how frugal they are or how much credit they can get.

Why do you think boy racers drive little hatchbacks? Because it's all they can afford and the insurance is cheap. Who do you think drive Rolls Royces and suchlike? Rich people of course, normal people couldn't afford it. This is basic common sense economics, I don;t know why I even have to argue it.

I'm guessing you've been born with a silver spoon in your mouth and don't really have an understanding of normal life. Which is why the right-wing libertarian myth about people being poor because they are lazy and people being rich because they are hardworking appeals to you.

The fact is accumulating a lot of wealth requires either luck (winning the lottery), being born to the right family, or having the ability to screw people over, whether legally or not.

I get you understand the direction of the causation is often misunderstood. I have no issue with that. But, what i'm saying is that just because there happens to be a correlation between two sets of data, doesn't mean there has to be any causation.

>> Why do you think boy racers drive little hatchbacks? Because it's all they can afford and the insurance is cheap. Who do you think drive Rolls Royces and suchlike? Rich people of course, normal people couldn't afford it. This is basic common sense economics, I don;t know why I even have to argue it.

Yes, i agree: "poor" boy-racers drive 'cheap' hot-hatches, and "rich" people drive rolls-royces.

So, now we agree on that, according to the report.... which states wealth means you are 4 times more likely to be more pushy driver.... The "rich" rolls-royce drivers go tearing around the streets, whereas the "poor" boy racers drive carefully and give way to traffic.

Utter crap. They are called boy "racers" for a reason. And Rolls-Royce drivers are notorious for driving carefully because they want to keep their car in pristine condition. All you've done is dis-proven the study.

Since a hot-hatch is a big investment for a teenager, it is more likely that whoever is willing to spend a larger PERCENTAGE of their wealth on a car is a pushy driver, rather than how much income you actually have.

It sounds like you are just imagining that what you want to hear is true, so it confirms your political bias.

These people have actually done the work, they have hard data obtained from real life. And they found that contrary to your ideology, Rolls Royce type drivers *were* more likely to be inconsiderate than people in boy racer type cars. Obviously these are caricature subsets of rich and poor car drivers in general, but you get the idea.

Maybe because they are rich they aren't so bothered about the financial cost of a collision?

And I see you have conveniently ignored the rest of the research which wasn't relying on the rich car = rich person idea. You just focused in with one very dubious argument against one small part of the research. Are you an AGW denialist by any chance ;-)

I think you still don't understand the correlation/causation thing either. Whether there is a causation between being rich and having an expensive car in either direction is totally irrelevant (though most likely true in one direction). The correlation is all we are interested in, because this experiment isn't about causative links between cars and wealth. It's about links between wealth and anti-social behaviour.

Now we could argue causation about whether the anti-social behaviour causes the wealth, or whether the wealth causes the anti-social behaviour, but that is another question. They have shown the correlation. I would guess the causation is a bit of both ways.

ok some reasonable points, but we'll have to agree to disagree.
I cant really go into the other points because i dont have time to type lots.

I realise they've done their research (the data), but I disagree with their interpretation of it.
The report's assumptions on the driver's wealth would be completely flawed just looking the car.
So many people live beyond their means for status symbols

One last point however:
Stick anyone (rich or poor) in an expensive sports car and there will be a temptation to drive it fast and aggressive compared to say a 1litre metro. Wealth is irrelevant - it is what car you drive is also they can say with any absolute certainly in the report because that is the only true data they actually have. The rest is assumptions.