Hooray for parents who don't do actual parenting!

Thank you for that last statement. I might be one cold S.O.B, but dammit, call'em like you see'em. They were stupid teenagers doing something a huge majority of other stupid teenagers don't do. Hence they were retardedly stupid teenagers. I can't wait for the day when the news reads "Idiots killed in stupid idiot stunt"

pfft they suck at dodge the police and pine tree. they should have been like left left handbrake and turn, nitros and boom. they would have been home free in brisbane.

besides, 190 kph is only like 30 miles an hour right?

Hell, I drive better in GTA than in real life.

In this case it does feel a lot like scapegoating, but you would be ignorant to believe video games have no effect on the developing minds of young people.

i do get "urge" to drive like a maniac RIGHT AFTER i play Full Auto but i know what not to do so it's just part on stupidity to think like that...

so does that mean those kids tried to do same thing from games they MAY or MAY NOT have played?

who knows...

does games actually MAKE kids do stupid things?

i don't think so...it's personal choice made by fucktards (excuse my language) who made poor choices...simple as that...

i know difference between reality and fantasy in gaming...if those kids couldn't figure that out, tough...probably it was case of kids being stupid....more stupid than usual...

I'd say it was the police pursuit and not the game that led to a high speed chase.

"Hell, I drive better in GTA than in real life."

Hahaha, awesome!

Seriously tho, kids have been crashing into shit before video games. If you're gonna blame someone, BLAME THEM FOR BEING IDIOTS. I'm tired of people using video games as a fucking scapegoat and an easy answer.

"I'd say it was the police pursuit and not the game that led to a high speed chase."

I highly agree ...

I thought there was already a study that showed teens who played video games are *better* drivers. I remember it pretty clearly.

I'll search for a link...

The 'reset button' analogy always sounds really dated to me. Most modern games let you either race the track over or just restart it from a pause menu, which I suppose could count as 'hitting the reset button' even though you aren't hiking across your living room to hit a button on the console itself. I dunno, just whenever I hear 'hit the reset button', I can only think of doing so on my NES, where it really was your main method of resetting a game. It makes it hard for me to take anyone who references such a button seriously.

If anything, I would think that video games have made me a better driver. It seems to me that most video games will help with your reaction speed.

I remember a few years ago a bunch of kids were driving down a hilly/semi-mountain road, and they drove off it and died. The city started a team to find out how they could make the road safer. They, of course, ignored the fact that there were five people in a two-seater.

Anyway, I thought the whole point was that everyone thinks they and everyone around them are invincible until they learn that they aren't. Sometimes people never do. Video games have nothing to do with it.

Video games honestly did make me a better driver. I was terrified of the responsibility of driving a car, and it all felt so foreign. I relaxed by thinking of Rad Racer and Cruisin' USA, and here it is, 12 years later with no accidents or moving violations. My wife is a much worse driver and she is very anti-gaming, but that doesn't prove anything.

Dumb kids killing themselves before they turn 18 is nature's way.

Cruel and savage, yet we should not intervene.

I always felt like videogames made me a better driver, as well. Where else can you get experience at 150mph in a Pinto before trying it? Or driving down curvy beach roads in a Ferrari?

Seriously, though, it seems like it helps your reaction time and also helps your ability to scan the road. Compared to most videogames, normal daily driving is pretty boring and not much happens. Games help you be ready if something does.

Those who flip into fantasy world would do it however they could. Games are just the easy, current way...

Ahh, more BS blamed on games instead of the parents. I've been playing all manner of violent games since the Atari 2600. I've gotten a few speeding tickets and a seat belt infraction. I pull over ASAP, and am polite to the cops. I usually get out of any trouble because of this. :)

IMO
The real problem is the parents and the news media. People just don't care anymore because the media seems to favor advertising the end of the world. If the world is that bad then I may as well live it up now. It won't matter when I'm old. Hey, it looked fun on COPS. Whatcha gonna do?

That's right, kids -- it's time to wise up. We're going to ignore that fact that sometimes teenagers like you are capable of doing amazingly stupid things, even though they may be against the law. We won't even blame weak parents for not paying any attention to what you're doing. The fault obviously lies on the games for those Pretendos and Xbots you all love so much.

As for our names, you can just call us, "The Media".

It's not them video games. It's the dang Rock and Roll music them kids are listening to nowadays.

"It's not PC to just call the kids retarded and be done with it."

I tend to agree. If you have a 16 year-old people who don't get that driving games aren't reality and visa-versa, especially the part about the reset button, than you got bigger problems then their driving skills.

PROTIP: Booze and drugs did it!

What a retarded statement: "teens think they can drive stupidly and just push the reset button"

Seriously, no-one is that stupid, even teens. It's the people who point to video games whenever anything happens that are mentally challenged. This is simply a case of a bunch of drunk/high teenagers thinking they can get away with anything because they haven't been taught to respect the law of the land. Someone should fine the parents for damage to that pine tree.

I think countries need to have new laws that impose mandatory fines and jail-time for parents when their children do stupid shit that kills themselves, or others. maybe then parents will have the motivation to pay attention to their children.

If you crash in a video game, you don't hit reset.

But of course, these people are video game experts who immerse themselves in their field of study to gain a greater understanding of the subject matter.

It's easy to forget the absolute utopia that must have been the time before video games. No violence, no speeding cars, no bad mannered sociopathic children. Just butterflies and rainbows all the way. Maybe just the occasional holocaust or genocide thrown in. But let's not dwell on that.

Wait. There is no reset button?

Bullcrap, Video games have the potential to make you a crap driver. Last year I build a driving game where I use my own car as a game controller in front of a large screen. After many hours "testing" I needed to drive for real to pick up something and nearly lost control on the very first bend in the road.

HOWEVER. These %$#%$#@ morons were braindead before they crashed. They were caught drinking then ran from the police. Nothing to do with games but everything to do with being idiots. Thanks you Mr. Darwin for rectifying this slight error in human genes.

id liek to see some number on this and the video games cause violence theories. Those theories have been kicking around for a while now, someone must have done a study or two. Anyone ever seen anything?

They shouldn't have tried to get that 2x multiplier.

Watch the idiots drive out of a movie theater parking lot after a the fast and the furious movie comes out and then see the correlation has anything to do with video games.

Like the guy who mentioned full auto said, yeah playing games makes some people - myself included - want to drive lik a maniac, but 99.9999% of them think to themselves 'wait a minute, I could kill myself and it's fucking stupid to do so'. Tragic sure, but I have no sympathy for these retarted kids. It's unfortuante they couldn't have a mistake that they could learn from, but when you start going 120 miles an hour you minimize that probability.

This was during christmas, anyone want to possibly speculate that they were oh... I don't know... drunk or something else that teens NEVER do. They just decided to take off on the streets during the holiday?

YCS

Okay, so that explains the kids, now how about they explain the grandma's driving at 25 mph in the fastlane?

Hey, I drive like a dick and I don't even PLAY driving games! Who can I blame this on, I need a scapegoat, and quick. My court date's in less than two days!

Blame it on the game? I think games alleviate some of these violent and destructive tendencies, much like sport lets out some aggression. If the video games aren't enough to satiate violent thoughts, then they had more problems than could be solved by video games.

@Mansteak
You've convinced me to build the Wheel O' Scapegoats. Similarly to the Wheel of Morality from Animaniacs, but full of things like "Subliminal Messages in the Rocking and Rolling Music", "I was Drunk!" and "It was them evil Vidja Games, Officer".

As for this whole Video Games = Bad [insert behavior here]. This one definately goes in the WTF pile. Unless they were playing a DS, GBA or PSP WHILE DRIVING, I can not see any sort of link between the two. Honestly, while I can loosely conceive the arguement that FPS = School Shooting (I don't believe it, but I can follow it from A to B), driving a car is vastly different. People encounter/see/hear about car wrecks all the time. It's not exactly a foreign element in the world and a little harder to chock up to being corrupted by a game.

Why does nobody ever blame car TV ads? Those are equally aggressive and extoll the virtues of excessive speed and acceleration as features of the product. If we are going to blame media influences then we should be inclusive.

Bleh. I'm a horrible, reckless driver in Crazy Taxi, racing games, etc. , but ask any of my friends, and they'll tell you I drive like a granny in real life (Not the lead-footed convertible variety, the 25-in-a-30 MPH variety).

and forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't the feeling of being bulletproof and invincible VERY VERY COMMON in teenagers anyway, even without video games? I seem to remember something along those lines in my college psych. courses. It's one of those things that goes away the older you get, a stage in life.

I'll grant you that being nigh invincible in a game might reinforce illogical feelings already present... but I don't believe it's the root cause. It's like saying violence and stupidity didn't exist before video games. Or rated-R movies, or rock and roll.

Most teenagers think they are bullet-proof regardless, so yea, call them stupid and be done with it. Shame for people to die so young- before they realize that they are NOT special/invincible.

I blame the fast and the furious movies, that and the slap on the hand society to kids.

:-p

As a NZer myself I can't help but thank the game for doing its part to weed a few more tards out of our gene pool.

I definitely think playing racing games over the past 15 years or so has made me a better driver. Thinking back to the times I had to make split second decisions, swirves, braking. It's like practicing kungfu and shit, it's training for the brain and reflexes so it becomes subconscious.

Of course I'm half joking here, but there's gotta be something to it.

I know this is horrible, but someone needs to die because a LACK of videogames. "Only 4 more hours of Twilight Princess could have saved little Jimmy!"

if you lived in new zealand you come to expect these kind of things, new zealand polititians are all retarded, and helen clark looks like a man

Watching the Gumball 3000 videos and playing Forza certainly made me a more aggressive driver. However, I still have never gotten a moving violation or caused an accident.

Hooray for realistic car physics in games...

Im actually quite sick of cars being able to ram into concrete walls and such without bumping... GIVE ME DENTS!

I don't drive the cars, I blow them up. You get more points that way, hello?

Living 15 minutes from New Jersey made me an agressive drive. Ban New Jersey!

Blaming games is the easy way out for politicians and parents. I'll admit that video games play a part, but that's just the tip of the iceberg so to speak. When people blame video games, they ignore socioeconomic factors. In this case, they never established the link between the kids and video games. They just made a blanket statement and blamed the games.

If people cannot display and proof their intelligence, they should be treated like lab rats and shocked with electricity until they learn! It could be Stanley Milgram's experiment all over again! Yay!

But seriously, I can only shake my head at people who blindly blame games when these problems existed before games.

"National's transport spokesman Maurice Williamson says today's young people think they are bullet-proof. He blames Playstations and X-boxes for making teens think they can drive stupidly and just push the reset button if anything goes wrong."

So...if they'd only bought a Gamecube instead they'd still be alive today? Wow. Who'dathunkit?

you gotta be kidding me. That's just stupid.

Marilyn Manson was responsible for the crash, not dangerous video games. Yay, scapegoats!