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Comment by phil21 | Hacker News Reader

> It seems fairly silly to think that Covid really changed how people drive.

As someone who has driven before, during, and after I think it's silly to think Covid didn't change how people drive. It's a night and day difference from 2019 to 2023 (first year of "back to normal") that cannot be explained by a gradual shift of people becoming more immersed in technology.

The attitudes in society towards law and order and what is acceptable day to day have massively shifted. Enforcement (at least where I am from) seems to be nonexistent too - and I think COVID laid that fact bare. People realized no one is actually watching or caring about what they do. Why not drive 55mph on the shoulder to get around that traffic jam if you know there are zero social or legal ramifications?

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I was driving quite a long time before Covid, and I drive about 50,000 miles a year. I’ve noticed a long, slow decrease in how well people drive, but I don’t think it has changed any more dramatically in the last three years. if you took the trendline prior to 2020 and drew it to 2023, it would get you to pretty much where we are today in terms of accidents and fatalities. They had already started increasing again before Covid.

And in any case, the plural of anecdote is not data. there’s just really no data to support the idea that everybody not driving for a month, and then driving less for a year or two, has made people worse at driving.

I wish I could find it, but I read a study recently about participation in the social contract that used a question like "would you run a rural red light with no one around?" as their metric. A lot more people say yes now than before 2020.

> As someone who has driven before, during, and after I think it's silly to think Covid didn't change how people drive.

Unless you're arguing that Covid had ramifications for everyone's brain, there's no reason to think that's anything but superstition.

> Unless you're arguing that Covid had ramifications for everyone's brain

"Covid" can refer to either the worldwide pandemic, or the specific disease. "Covid", the event which was a world wide pandemic, did affect everyone's brain. You know how? Because that's where memories are stored. Memories are stored in the brain, and memories influence belief systems which affect behavior. What people remember, and what they have now learned, is that they can get away with a lot more illegal shit while driving than they are used to, and what they have learned through experience (which are formed through memory) is that people are super aggressive when driving after the worldwide pandemic, which causes them to change their behavior too.

> no reason to think that's anything but superstition.

Pretty ballsy to say that hard data of drivers getting more reckless (which is furnished in the article you're replying to) is superstition.

> Pretty ballsy to say that hard data of drivers getting more reckless (which is furnished in the article you're replying to) is superstition.

thankfully, that's not what I said.

What I said is that this idea that everyone forgot how to drive is stupid and superstitious.

blowing smoke up ones ass used to be a medical treatment until we learned differently.

Something may be going on but it sure as shit isn't that people forgot how to drive.

> had ramifications for everyone's brain, there's no reason to think that's anything but superstition.

Or people began driving differently when the roads were empty (even if less frequently) and continued doing that even the amount of traffic increased significantly

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