A Danger Behind the Wheel

How many of you had toy cars growing up? I don't necessarily mean a pedal car or push car like the one pictured but just a regular old toy car. I'm sure that toy car probably has more miles on it than any other car you have owned or will own. It was your ticket to freedom when you were a kid. You could have adventures and road trips to anyplace your imagination could take you. Your car could do anything, and amazingly enough, it would always have enough gas. And no matter what, you were an excellent driver, so much so that you could literally get your car to fly with no worries. On occasion you probably had a little fender bender here and there too. If you did, then that may explain a lot of things.

What do I mean? Well, the University of Melbourne in Australia recently completed a 20 year study in which they successfully linked bad driving to childhood behavior and attitudes. What does that mean? Well when playing with your toy car(s) did you ever crash them or jump from the sofa to the floor bouncing the entire way? Then you are a prime candidate for being a bad driver. You are most likely aggresive behind the wheel and a general menace on the road.

But wait a second! Can anyone out there honestly tell me that they have never crashed a toy car or jumped it off of a table top to the floor below? Has no one out there pushed their car beyond normal speeds to get it from one side of the room to the other? Of course not! Everyone has and that is completely normal behavior isn't it? Well according to the doctors down under that isn't the case. Kids who show these signs are more likely to show bad driving habits and so they are advising parents to curb such tendencies.

Now I think we can safely say tha tthe majority of us out there have shown these signs as kids but I don't think that necessarily makes us bad drivers. If that were the case wouldn't we all be driving like madmen from one point to the next? Wouldn't there be more fender benders and accidents? Wouldn't there be more road rage? I grant you that there is already a lot of that out on the roads today, but to believe what the doctors are saying, there should logically be a lot more of that type of behavior out there.

I don't think parents need to worry too much about there kids if they show signs like that. I mean there are just some kids who enjoy destroying their toys too much. They're the ones who have action figures that are blown up or all bald Barbie dolls. They're the ones with broken toy cars and doll houses that have seen better days. If they're doing all these destructive things as kids, I would worry about them now even before I worried about them behind the wheel of a car.