I'm not afraid of dying, just don't give me a ticket!

May 19, 2006 7:53 PM

Does anyone know a source for this story? I once heard about a railroad crossing that had quite a few fatal accidents, because drivers would routinely duck under the barrier gates as they closed instead of waiting several minutes for interminable freight trains to pass. But there's a twist ...

Rest of the story: some cars would get stuck on the tracks, for whatever reasons, with predictable results. The standard "RR XING" warning sign was having no effect, so local officials put up another big warning sign advising drivers that they could be killed trying to beat the gates.

This sign too had no effect. So they put up a third sign saying that drivers would get a ticket and $200 fine for crossing after the stop signal, and this sign got results!

The moral was that, when assessing risk, people seem to weight the probability of a bad outcome more heavily than the severity of the outcome. Sure, death is the worst outcome but it seems pretty improbable, so I'll go ahead and sprint across the tracks. However, it seems very plausible that a cop will appear and give me a ticket, so I think I'll just sit here and wait.

I'd love to track down this story because I see this phenomenon a lot in other situations. Can the hive mind help?

Background info: probably heard on the radio rather than read, so it was most likely NPR's "All Things Considered"; railroad crossing might have been in Texas; probably heard this about 10 years ago. Thanks!

posted by Quietgal to grab bag (8 comments total)

Not hard evidence, but in Sociology of Deviance we are taught that increasing the severity of the punishment has not affected crime rates significantly, but increasing the certainty and celerity (swiftness) has. So my gut feeling is that even if this story isn't true, the idea behind it has some merit.
posted by arcticwoman at 9:00 PM on May 19, 2006

Interesting story about the railroad crossing.

This is one reason why Japan had extremely low crime rates in the eighties and early nineties.

The penalties allowed under the Japanese penal code were weak compared to those in the USA but the arrest and conviction rates were much higher.

A man in Texas contemplating murder had to weigh the risk of severe punishment (death) with the probability of being arrested and found guilty (relatively low*).

* The US has a low ratio of police officers to serious crimes, more restrictions on police activities and higher chance of getting off on a legal technicality.

A woman in Japan contemplating murder, however, weighed the risk of punishment (short jail term*) with the probability of being arrested and found guilty (almost 100%**).

* A mother in Japan who murdered her own child got as little as 8 years - a slap on the wrist compared to the death penalty.

**The ratio of police to serious crimes is much higher, Japanese police enjoy broad powers and the legal system tends to cooperate with the police (essentially, if the police think you are guilty, nothing short of a miracle will get the courts to pass a not guilty verdict).

While this was not the only factor involved in the crime rates, the huge difference would suggest that the probability of being caught is more important than the severity of the punishment.

Again, interesting story about the crossing. Sorry I couldn't be of any help finding the story but I really appreciate you posting this. Thank you.

If you are interested in papers regarding crime rates, you could try contacting UNAFEI (where I got my information in the mid nineties - they were very helpful).

On Preview: Wow, arcticwoman. Thank you for your post - I forgot to mention that the Japanese police and court systems were much faster than those in the United States. Celerity certainly was a factor in the lower Japanese crime rates. Thank you.
posted by cup at 9:44 PM on May 19, 2006

The phenomenon sounds a lot like the availability heuristic: the reason why people can feel so certain that events they have more experience with must be more likely. Its formulators, Kahneman and Tversky, use a number of 'what if' surveys to explore how it affects risk perception, but real-life applications like the one you heard about are a little murkier, often involving other factors like (in this case) object familiarity, which can cause people to underestimate the speed of trains. I swear I've heard that story too, but I can't find anything on it. However, it doesn't seem like similar concepts have always reduced railcrossing crashes: organizations based on the fear of ticketing (pdf) approach claim it works wonders, while a widely publicized red light cam program in Illinois threatening tickets for gate jumping hasn't reduced them. Great question, though, and I'll be watching this thread.
posted by ellanea at 11:10 PM on May 19, 2006

Another interpretation of the story, I suppose, is that people feel comfortable risking death or injury (it's a personal choice) but less comfortable breaking the law (it suddenly becomes a moral question). In some societies the effect might be reversed.

(Of course, if your car is stuck on the tracks, you're endangering not just yourself but everyone on the train, and if it's carrying hazardous cargo, everyone nearby as well... but people don't usually think of that.)
posted by hattifattener at 12:28 AM on May 20, 2006

If you are interested in this kind of question you should read Steven Levitt's Freakonomics. It has several examples of this sort of reward / risk behaviour. For example a nursery started fining parents who arrived late to pick their kids up. Rather than cut the numbers turning up late it actually increased them because parents didn't feel so bad about doing it because they were effectively paying for the extra time their child was at the nursery.

And he has a very interesting take on the whole crime issue.
posted by jontyjago at 3:03 AM on May 20, 2006

I second the recommendation for Freakonomics. A somewhat related comment from the author (possibly in a review of the book, not the book itself) was the perfect deterrent for parking in disabled spaces was the death penalty with a very, very tiny incidence.
This, of course, implies the opposite of your story is the most rational response.
Sorry I can't offer anything to your story directly.
posted by bystander at 4:09 AM on May 20, 2006

I remember seeing your story in a documentary about railroad crossing deaths (I'm something of an insomniac), I believe it may have been on the DiscoveryTimes channel. Hope that helps.
posted by nevercalm at 9:26 PM on May 20, 2006

Thanks, everyone, for the interesting comments, especially ellanea!
posted by Quietgal at 5:34 PM on May 21, 2006