Bad drivers? Blame their genes

Baack · Oct 29, 2009

WASHINGTON (Reuters) No need to curse that bad driver weaving in and out of the lane in front of you -- he cannot help it, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.
They found that people with a particular gene variant performed more than 20 percent worse on a driving test than people with a different DNA sequence.
The study may explain why there are so many bad drivers out there -- about 30 percent of Americans have the variant, the team at the University of California Irvine found.
"These people make more errors from the get-go, and they forget more of what they learned after time away," Dr. Steven Cramer, who led the study published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, said in a statement.
Cramer and his team tested 29 people -- 22 without the gene variant and seven who had it -- asking them to drive 15 laps on a simulator and then repeat the task a week later.
To their surprise, they found that those with the mutant gene did worse, consistently.
The gene controls a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which affects memory.
The team was not really looking for insights into driving but chose the driving test because it uses common skills.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091029/od_nm/us_genes_driving_odd

Baack · Oct 29, 2009

Nope my bad driving took practice

kajidono · Oct 29, 2009

Reminds me of when we used to play "California drivin school" when we were teenagers. Pull up and stop in the middle of the intersection, spin out in the road for no reason, make a right turn where there was no right turn and go plowing through the woods (dodge darts cannot be harmed by mere trees), ah, fun.

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