Pirates of the Pavement: Car Color and Dangerous Driving

Overview

Objectives/Goals Is a certain color of car more likely to be driven unsafely? The reason I chose speed and stopping patterns was because it could be most objectively measured and it was the safest and easiest way to measure. I could sit on the freeway to measure following too closely or unsafe lane changes, so I chose speed and stopping patterns, so I sit on a city street, to conduct my experiment. Methods/Materials Two different factors were used to test unsafe driving - speed and stopping at stopping signs. Nine colors of cars were selected to observe driving safety: silver, red, white, tan/beige, brown, black, green, blue and yellow. I selected Carlson Blvd in Richmond as the location to observe speeding cars. I noted the posted speed limit as 35 mph. Using a radar gun, I recorded the clor of car and the speed for those cars traveling over the speed limit. I selected two four-way intersections with stop signs, and observed the color of each car and their stopping patterns. Results I observed a total of 340 speeding cars. The result of the speed test indicated that black, silver, and blue cars, in that order, had the highest average speed. Out of 993 cars observed at the intersections, 341 cars did not stopvat the stop sign. 50% of yellow cars did not stop, followed by 38.3% of blue and silver cars. Conclusions/Discussion The data supports my hypothesis by concluding that the color of the car a person drives is linked to how unsafely they operate the car. Areas for future research would include looking at gender, age, vehicle size, model, and age of vehicle.

Competition history

• CSEF 2004 Social Sciences (Junior Division Only) · Entry J1706

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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