MSN: Wealthy Prius drivers can be huge jerks

If I had a police cruiser, no more stinkin':

• speed limits
• stop lights
• stop signs
• lanes are optional
• roads are optional

Oh, I might quit my job too:


And go on a new diet:


Bob Wilson

 

Great example of sensational media. Judging by the comments following the article they got the attention they were looking for with the headline. Rather amusing

 

Cool - you're driving a status symbol!
The Prius - for the very special, the very proud, and very wealthy...
Now ain't that rich!

 

I was driving when I read this and nearly choked on my cheeseburger I was laughing so hard!

 

Isn't a rolling stop referred to as a "california stop" anyway? So, these rolling stop drivers were just fulfilling their duty to ensure that it's an accurate term.

 

The team looked at two behaviors. Stopping to allow a pedestrian to enter and cross a cross walk. Waiting their turn to go at a 4 way stop. My guess it is stopping for pedestrians, which can hurt fuel economy that hurt the prius.

I have sent an email to piff, asking about this and whether they catagorized the prius as a wealthy car before or after they got the data I expect him to reply, and will share any insites I learn. I don't think this study really said what that msn headline said, but blogs and news like to sensationalize.

 

I think the location of where the study was done may have been a factor. If it was a wealthy community that normally drives Mercedes and the like which tend to have a higher level of arrogance and cockiness anyway, and you have some there that want to convey an outward image of "saving the polar bears" even though the carbon footprint of their homes may be several times that of an average home. Well a Prius nicely fits the image. For such people it is likely not to be about fuel economy savings either, they maybe have their servants fetching the groceries in the SUV.

For me it's been about getting a reliable car with almost the lowest Total cost of ownership possible, by buying a 3 year old 2010 Prius for $14k (after a lot of searching) and then selling it privately in 3 years time for maybe $10k. Cost of owning car for 3 yrs $4k, fuel saved in the 3 years about $5k compared to my previous car if gas stays at $4/gal. Lower environment impact and reduction on fuel imports while very nice side benefits were not my primary reason for buying a Prius.

I suspect many of the jerks who didn't stop in the cross walk are probably not the type that would be inclined to become Priuschat members either. I don't get the impression here that the active Priuschat members are arrogant environment snobs either. It's better if one can achieve environmental objectives by promoting a culture of efficiency/technological advancement in everything that we do, instead of doing it by the alternative increasing taxes/fines socialistic mentality.

Rich selfish snobs driving Prius's (or Prii) sometimes counter-intuitively set back environment progress by a decade and encourages Joe six-pack in a trailer home to by a 15 mpg pick up and revs up his engine to prove he can pass a Prius which gives him a temporary high to mentally block out for a moment the stress he feels when he can't pay his credit card due to his high gas bills, and the fact his truck will have lost more than half its value in 3 years.

 

This is the response I got to my questions to Paul Piff one of the studies authors. If you have more questions I will be happy to forward them to him.

 

Do we yet have any clue what number of Prii were observed in this sample? Considering that the sample of all cars was N=152, the number of any subcategory would seem to be quite small, producing a seriously broad variance or confidence interval.

 

I am quite sure if you drill down far enough into the data you can find potential problems. Was a man driving a prius and did not stop for a man? That is the most likely sex combination they found for not stopping for pedestrians. Since they were testing would a wealthy driver (identified by the model and year car driven) stop for a pedestrian.

I am sure if I request the raw data, they will supply it, but I doubt it will do much good. If the berekely team were studying the prius, that would be a separate issue. It is significant that they before the study picked late model prii in the bay area as belonging to wealthy before the results were in. We have things like this to confirm that.
Demographics of a Prius Owner: fit, wealthy, educated. Laura , The Toyota Expert
Is The Toyota Prius The Latest Status Symbol Of The Wealthy? - Forbes

Given the high number of prii in the bay area, I would guess at N=152 and 70% of prii failed to stop for pedestrians, then for prii you will reach a statistically significant result for that intersection. If you wanted to test the prii, wealth, not stop for pedestrians, hypothesis, which was not part of the study, then you would need to test in more neighborhoods, and choose areas where prius drivers were not wealthy as a control. Perhaps less wealthy prius drivers would stop as the researchers might have in there hypothesis. Or perhaps prius drivers believing the toyota moving forward tag line never want to hit there brakes unless there is a police officer.

 

Was that you?

 

If your black Prius now has some large white scrapes on it from my ex-beater of an HHR, then yeah?

 

i have trouble at crosswalks. no problem if someone is in it crossing, but too often, people mill around the curb, looking at their phone, talking, looking in another direction, i'm not always sure they're waiting to cross. of course, the other day, an old guy with a walker (older than me if you can believe it) just starts crossing without looking in either direction. i was happy to see he made it!

 

yeah!!!!!! no snobs HERE!!!!!!!

 

152 cars? Way to small a sample to draw any conclusions. Come back when you have 10,000 cars. This would be easy enough to do if a camera was used. It would allow greater collection of data, and remove subjectivity.

 

Cameras change behavior. What you are asking for is more data about 1 car the prius, and that is not what is being studied here. Less than 20% fail to follow the law and stop for pedestrians, but late model prius and bmw drivers fail to stop 70+% of the time is highly significant. They noted that all the beater cars (old, but not classic or valuable) stopped. As mentioned earlier this is a wealth/behavior study, mainly done by phd students at UC-Berekely. This was done in an area where wealthy buy late model prii. The lead author, when I asked him by e-mail, said that one possible explanation for the prius drivers may be that stopping (following the law) might have them use more gas. Other explanations may be that wealthier people are less concerned about paying traffic fines than those with less money. The other findings are that men stopped less than woman, and men and women both stopped more often for female pedestrians than male pedestrians.

The msn headline is highly misleading on what was being studied.

 

Maybe there should be a study on MSN headlines.

 

Am I the only one thinking about oil-sponsored propaganda hit? One along the lines of Hummer greener than Prius?

 

No, and the hummer wasn't oil sponsered either.

This comes out of UC - Berekely, and it did not say what msn headline said. That is msn trying to be anti prius to bring in readers.

The hummer crap came from cnw, which is a automotive group, and a very pro-SUV one at that.

The oil industries big push right now is to repeal or weaken the ethanol mandate. I support them in that against ADM, monsanto, and big ag.