Baby on Board
~ a thought experiment ~
Picture driving. You see a car in front of you or in the other lane with a “baby on board” (or similar) sign indicating that a small child is in that vehicle. This primes you to pay attention and to drive more carefully.
In reality, we have no idea if a child is actually in the car at that moment. But the priming effect works nonetheless.
I recently put an equivalent sign on my car even though I do not have children.
The goal, as alluded to, is a Call to Action, a wake-up call, a reminder that we should all be cautious and drive carefully. After all, cars are dangerous. They take the lives of far too many every day.
What if everyone had a “baby on board” sticker on their car? Would it change the way we drive? Would we all drive a little more defensively?
What if we simply imagined the possibly of a child in the car? What if, we prompted ourselves each time we got in the driver’s seat, to consider the possibility that every car contains the lives of people that we wish to protect from harm.
All we have to do is act as if.
This is interesting, and I think in a perfect world the implications of this experiment would be such that everyone would drive with more care and thoughtfulness to their fellow drivers; but unfortunately, we live in a world where people are inherently selfish and most often consider the cars around them as objects in their way(as opposed to acknowledging that there are people behind the wheel). I also think there is a big difference to the way drivers interact with one another on town roads and highways, versus on interstates. The type of car you are in makes a difference as well! I had a hand-me-down minivan before moving to the city, and I'm pretty sure that's the reason I rarely dealt with aggressive drivers. There's truth in the idea that in situations like you mentioned, it's more about optics than reality.