By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People who play car racing video games may be more prone to drive recklessly and get into accidents, according to a study that adds to evidence that video games can influence the behavior of some players.

The study by German researchers published on Sunday examined the effect these games, featuring realistic driving environments with players often racing through city and suburban traffic, affect people who play them.

" Driving actions in these games often include competitive and reckless driving, speeding and crashing into other cars or pedestrians, or performing risky stunts with the vehicle. In short, most actions in racing games imply a very high risk of having an accident or severe crash in a highly realistic virtual road traffic environment," the researchers wrote.

The researchers first questioned 198 men and women. Those who played the games most often were more likely to report engaging in aggressive and risky driving and getting in auto accidents. Those who played these games less often reported driving more cautiously, the researchers said.

The researchers then studied 68 men and found those who played even one racing game took more risks afterward in traffic situations on a computer simulator than those who played another type of game.

Then the researchers had 83 men play either a racing game or another type of game, and found that those who played the racing game reported more thoughts and feelings associated with risk-taking than the others.

" Risk-acceptance is one of the most prominent and important factors in the discussion of the origin of accidents caused by young drivers," Joerg Kubitzki of the Allianz Center for Technology, who conducted the study along with researchers at Munich' s Ludwig-Maximilians University, said by e-mail.

The researchers cited previous research involving the " shooter" genre of games, in which the player shoots at adversaries, that found an increase in aggression-related thoughts and actions among people who played these games. But they said little had been known about the influence driving games might have on actual driving behavior of players.

" The question of age restrictions, legally or voluntary, should be discussed not only for " shooter" games but also for this kind of games, which have an impact on traffic safety," Kubitzki said.

The study appeared in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, published by the American Psychological Association.

Reuters

Now, i have a question; how much would a study like this cost, from start to finish?!

Ok they spent time on this research, but what were the ages of the people concerned? I would suggest that a specific age group was used and as such research like this is flawed. If it were a cross section then I would accept it.
Next they will be saying anyone playing a football game will try and score from the half way line when playing the real thing.

Couldn' t it be the other way around, that people who drive like idiots from the first place are attracted to racing games?
Each time they make research like that they only look at it from one angle.
Same with shooters, it' s not that shooters make people aggressive, it' s that some people who are already aggressive are attracted to the genre because they get stimulated.
That' s what I think anyway.

Simple explanation: Young adults are shitty drivers to begin with. Which happen to be the same age group of the majority of gamers. In other words even if this was a random sample the non gamers are more likely to be older and more experienced drivers. I want to see how they selected their sample. These studies are always bias. Why would they make such a study if they didn' t want to see a certain result? Fucking assholes, most studies like this are bullshit and this is a prime example.

I agree with Ginjirou. I have always loved street racing and aggressive driving. However I do not want to risk others lives so I tend to do my more entertaining driving on empty back roads or out in the middle of nowhere (there' s alot of that in Minnesota). Which is why I enjoy racing games (more specifically Flatout and Burnout and for added realism with excessive driving Forza).

Racing games may spur risky driving:GERMAN study

Is it just me or is it funny that the country that makes most of the fastest foreign(to the US) cars is saying this?

I agree with Ginjirou. I have always loved street racing and aggressive driving. However I do not want to risk others lives so I tend to do my more entertaining driving on empty back roads or out in the middle of nowhere (there' s alot of that in Minnesota). Which is why I enjoy racing games (more specifically Flatout and Burnout and for added realism with excessive driving Forza).

Haha, yeah i know what you mean. Im sure your familiar with the term little big town? Well they call my city the Big little town because we have enough land to hold like 1-2 mil. people, but we only have like 300,000, so we have all sorts of places to drive wrecklessly

If it is a German study then it means nothing. They fear everything to do with videogames. They censor everything there. Videogames make people kill. Now racing games make people kill on the road. Videogames are bad. They will destroy society. Therefore Germany must save society (in their extreme post WW2 guilt) by destroying videogames.

Joe your a legend. There was another of these studies done recently by the RAC or similar in the UK, and it said pretty much if your a chav and you drive like an idiot you are more likely to like driving games. That doesnt proove anything.

Heck, anyone INTELLIGENT (IQ is probably a decent enough criteria here which has been ommitted in the study) knows they can take the piss on PGR3 and push far harder because its " not real" then on the road... this is just embarrassing that other " Academics" would get behind this tosh.

Before we know it we will have those dammn infuriating LED signs before each corner in Forza, telling to go forty mph even though your actually only doing 40 allready! Heck if we were talking about speeding in Tokyo Bus Driver I bet nobody would give a dam - and that would be lethal!!

In real life I am confused when I drive because the transparent animated arrows telling me where to turn (like in Burnout) are nowhere to be seen. Also there is no giant bouncing arrow hovering over my destination like in Crazy Taxi. I end up not knowing where to go. This is because I cannot separate games from reality.

Hey Joe, without causing offence your not German are you? They seem to think the exact same thing.

Joe' s being sarcastic / ironic / evil

My first reaction was " Holy crap, a negative report about games from Germany, who' d have thunk it?" ... but Joe stole any sarcasm I could muster with his genius. Damnit.

I hate it when games have a first person view' s in the car that I am driving. That way I get confused which one is reality and which one is the game, So I go out and play burnout in my real car.