Snow and Dirt Adversely Affect Human Behavior

I don't think anyone's done an empirical study on this. Perhaps there is a government grant out there with your name on it. The scientific process is this:

1. State the problem
2. Conduct observations
3. Develop an hypothesis
4. Conduct an experiment (to test your hypothesis)
5. Draw a conclusion

Over the years, I've made some observations here and there, which led to the statement of a problem (or what I perceived to be a problem), that some people who drive don't know what they're doing.

Next, I conducted multiple observations as a "mini-test" to make sure that my initial observations weren't the result of outliers, those instances that lie outside the statistical bell curve that can have unwanted influence on your analysis. These outliers in "layman terms" are called exceptions.

After many observations conducted over the past couple years ("couple" is not a scientifically relevant value, but in general refers to the number "2") I've developed an hypothesis which is:

Snow and dirt adversely affect human driving behavior. Now, this hypothesis may not be correct. Driving behavior may just be a visible sign (or measurable, quantifiable, testable) of how snow and dirt adversely affects human behavior in general. During experimentation it might be found that there are other factors more important than snow and dirt in affecting driving behaviors, more or less falsifying the hypothesis. If that occurs, refinement of the hypothesis and further experimentation is needed.

Much to most people's surprise, the goal of experimentation is not to "Prove" a theory or hypothesis, but to falsify it, but not truly say "this is false". The idea of trying to falsify an hypothesis makes it harder for someone to massage, or manipulate, data on a pet project to get the results they want (to agree with the hypothesis they've presented). A more successful experiment occurs when attempts to disprove the hypothesis are unsuccessful. That makes the hypothesis and resulting conclusion much stronger and believable.

Enough of the science lesson. Back to my hypothesis.

My basic observations are that when it snows or when the roads are dirt, people become stupid.

Think of these situations, I'm sure you've observed this very same behavior.

1. A parking lot where you work. Most everyone who also works there have been parking in that lot for years. The layout hasn't changed since the day the pavement was laid down. There are even landmarks, such as light poles, placed on a grid pattern that is easily seen. However, when it snows, just a little, just enough to cover the lines of the parking spaces, nobody can park in a straight line. The driving lanes between the linear rows of light posts look like a quickly-moving snake and some cars on opposite sides of the row are parked so close together (rear bumper to rear bumper) that anything larger than a Yugo can't get through.

Same thing goes for shopping mall parking lots, even though I'm giving a slight bit of leeway there as some shopping mall lots are not laid out on an easily defined grid.

2. Streets. When it snows, why can't people remember where the lanes are? You drive the same roads day after day after day, year after year after year. But when it snows what force causes the road to narrow, widen, or curve when it is normally straight? How come people have to drive straddling two lanes when they know damn well there are two lanes there?

3. Dirt roads (where they were once paved). The main road by my studio is being widened and part of a side road that leads to my studio has had the pavement removed for about 100 yards. The main road and my studio road more or less form a "T" with another side road about 50 feet south of the main road, so the entire configuration forms an "F". Going from the base of the F up to the T of the main road, there is a stop sign at the first junction, and another at the main road. Coming back south from the main road there is just the one stop sign at the middle part of the F. All roads were two-lane. The main road is being widened to 5 lanes.

Up until the time the pavement was removed, folks stopped at all stop signs and drove single file where they needed to. Now, with the road being dirt, people don't stop at the stop sign and since there are no lines, they treat the road as if it's covered with snow. The 2 lane road is now a "4" lane road, at least up until the pavement. Most of the people driving this part of the road have done so for years. They live down the road and travel it every day to and from work. They know what the configuration was before the construction and it hasn't changed much since construction began. But now, more and more people are just driving through the stop signs and making their own turn and merge lanes. Go figure.

I think it would be an easy experiment to conduct, although costly. But the government has a history of making funding available for seemingly frivolous large budget studies.