is bad driving a sign of low[er] intelligence?

krispy kremlin wrote:

How intelligent are NASCAR drivers? Would they be serving fries be it not for their driving prowess?

Some might, but if you listen to them in interviews many come across as fairly intelligent people, it's just that they focused on racing instead of going to college when they were younger. I think a guy like Jeff Gordon or Jimmie Johnson would have been successful in about anything they did. Others would be working manual labor jobs.

To the best of my knowledge, only one Cup driver has a degree and that is Ryan Newman, who has an engineering degree from Purdue.

IQ is highly correlated with the selective attention - the ability to attend to relevant cues and tune out irrelevant distractions. This seems to be relevant to driving.

Also people with higher IQs are better able to multitask which seems to be something most drivers are doing now a days.

People, did you not see that someone actually produced a knowledgeable answer to the question? No need to continue with random speculation and recounting anecdotes--here is your answer:

Mr. Obvious wrote:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0001457582900574

Abstract

Intelligence test scores were related to the accident and violation records of a representative sample of 113 young male drivers. Low intelligence drivers were over-involved in intersection accidents and received a disproportionate number of speeding charges. The implications of this finding for a diagnostic-remedial approach to improving driver training are discussed from the viewpoint of both new drivers and persons participating in driver improvement programmes.

I know it is against the Letsrun code to produce actual evidence, but there it is.

Interestingly enough, the reason that Albert Einstein always rode his bike was not because he didn't have the money to invest in a car (obviously). It's said that he was such a distracted person that he was merely unable to drive successfully. so that's interesting.

Probably the opposite.

The stereotypical bad Asian driver has some basis in truth.

And, per the results of standardized testing, Asians are by far the smartest group in the nation

80% of people think their driving skills are above average

(source: McCormick, Walkey, Green (June 1986). "Comparative perceptions of driver ability— A confirmation and expansion")