Does Medical Specialty Determine Speeding Drivers? Your will be surprised about the worst offenders.
According to US research, psychiatrists are more likely to speed when driving to a medical emergency than surgeons and obstetricians. Also cardiologists are more likely to drive flashier cars (41% of all cardiologists) while General Practitioners (GPs) are the least likely speciality to be in a luxury car when booked (20%).
Researchers at the Harvard Medical School in Boston, analysed the speeding tickets issued to 5372 doctors and 19,639 non-doctors in Florida from 2004-17 to determine whether fast driving, luxury car ownership and leniency by police officers differed among medical specialities.
They hypothesised that rates of extreme speeding would vary across specialties, owing to underlying personalities and specific professional requirements. “For example, physicians in some specialties may exhibit thrill-seeking behaviour, whereas physicians in certain specialties such as obstetrics and surgery might be called from home to attend medical emergencies”, they said.
However, they found specialists had broadly similar speeding patterns below extreme speeding levels, traveling an average 24km/h over the limit.
The team found psychiatrists had the highest rate (31% of all psychiatrists booked) of extreme speeding, categorised as more than 32km/h over the speed limit. This is a “behaviour that based on prior research cannot be explained by wanting to get to the golf course in a hurry,” they wrote in the BMJ.
Overall, more than one-quarter of doctors given a speeding ticket were clocked extreme speeding.
“The need-for-speed record belonged to a general internist, who drove at nearly 113km/h above the limit”, they reported.
Further, they found doctors can expect little special treatment from police with rates of ‘speed discounting’, a practice that lessens the offence, similar between specialties and between doctors and the public.
But female doctors did score fewer tickets (18%) despite making up one-third of the workforce.
Also recently it was found that certain car manufacturers appeal to physicians across the age spectrum. Toyota topped the preference list at 20%, followed by Honda (15%) [2].
Are you a speedster, road demon or hoon?
Ref: SERMO
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