Videogames Driving

It hardly needs repeating that videogames continue to take the blame for many of society’s violence and obesity ills. However, people have become anesthetized after the hundredth ‘Video Game Kills’ article. Increasingly people are looking for new evils that videogames trigger. The hot new issue is bad youth drivers. Several police agencies, communities and insurance companies are blaming videogames for bad driver ‘Need for Speed.’ In one case, a man used the game Grand Theft Auto as an excuse for thinking he could outrun the cops.

In New Zealand, the government has responded to a recent fatal car accident involving teenagers by pointing the finger at videogame, saying they make teenagers feel "bulletproof" when they drive. Anyone who has ever spent a day playing a racing videogame might find feel this way for a moment when you get into a car, but as your brain adjusts back to reality, the reality that you drive a vehicle that probably doesn’t top over 100 mph should also sink in. I

It's hard to imagine that anyone would actually change their driving habits because of a game, unless they were really, well, stupid and reckless. Of course, young drivers have always been known to make stupid and reckless decisions, long before the advent of videogames, just as there has always been violence and obesity too. Why blame video games for human stupidly?

Back before the times of cars and video games, how many dumb youths would get drunk and then race the train jumping across the tracks in front of the train? It happened and there were no video games to blame back than. Stupid people do stupid things regardless of the video game they might have or not have played. People need to take responsibility for their own actions and people need to stop hunting for reasons to support why a dumb deed was done.