Being in the car with my sister is like asking for death. If you want to live through the death trip, you better buckle up, but even that might not save you. Every time I’m forced to ride as her passenger, I find myself clenching the seat with my butt cheeks, holding on to the side door paneling, and slamming my foot on the imaginary brake. If only that imaginary break worked.
I started to do some research to try and figure out why my sister is such a horrible driver when I came across a study done by Diane Halpern, a psychology professor at California State University at San Bernardino, and Stanley Coren, a researcher at the University of British Columbia. They wanted to figure out why there were more right-handed old people then left-handed old people. Part of the study that was most interesting to me was that Halpern and Coren found left-handed people were four times more likely than right-handed people to die from injuries while driving. Halpern says that this is because almost all of the engineering in a car is geared for right-handed people with the stick shift and the gas pedal on the right side.
When I first read this study it seemed kind of like a stretch to say that my sister is awful at driving because she’s left handed, but now that I think about it, maybe Halpern and Coren are right. After all, my sister did wreck three cars in one week. Sure, she escaped each wreck uninjured, but who knows how long she can keep that up. Maybe I should start appreciating my sister while I still have her. I mean, everyone’s luck is bound to run out sometime.
No comments:
Post a Comment