'Fast And Furious' Movies Make People Drive Faster, Study Finds

Long Story Short

The Fast and Furious movies are either super effective, or (more likely) people are super dumb.

Long Story

There are few things sweeter than Dom and the gang tearing up the big screen in the Fast and Furious films. You can decide for yourself what the best scene is; I’ll take Vin Diesel jumping a Dodge Charger over a submarine (on ice).

And it seems a lot of people feel the same way. A fascinating and semi-hilarious study printed in the New York Times has revealed that Fast and Furious movies may be encouraging people to drive like maniacs.

The Times study, led by Anupam B. Jena, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, found rates of both speeding and extreme speeding increased in the sample county of Montgomery County, Maryland, following the releases of three Fast and Furious movies between 2012 and 2017.

The study examined 192,892 speeding tickets across three weekends after the release of the films. Ticketed speeds increased almost 20%, from an average of 16 miles per hour over the speed limit to 19 miles per hour.

Rates of extreme speeding were even worse, with the number of people caught driving more than 40 miles per hour above the speed limit almost doubling. The extreme speeders were often busted within two miles of theaters, which the study’s authors say suggests the speeding was “induced by moviegoing.”

The idea behind the Times story is to look at the effect different media, such as films and video games, have on our behavior. 

Often this area of research is rife with issues concerning causality, and the Times study’s authors admit their results are limited. Nevertheless, initial evidence would suggest there’s a pretty hilarious — if mildly frightening — link going on here.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

“Vin Diesel made me do it.” Legit defense?

Drop This Fact

Deadpool 2 director David Leitch is currently considered the frontrunner to direct Universal’s as yet untitled Fast and Furious spin-off, starring Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham.

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Best Movie Trilogies

The end of 2015 saw The Star Wars saga pick up where it left off with a new trilogy, thanks to the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. And the hype of our collective geekdom reached feverish heights. 


Will the rest of the films in the new trilogy manage to redeem the tarnished Star Wars universe after the last three underwhelming prequels? Only time will tell, but if they manage to pull it off, it will be quite the feat seeing as expectations are still sky-high.

Making a satisfying collection of three films is something very few series achieve, because it requires exceptional story control, characters you’ll care about over many hours and many years, plus a writer/director’s ability to tie everything together without necessarily knowing the end of Part Three when they’re making the beginning of Part One. These, in my view, are the 10 trilogies that have done it best. 

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7. Train tracks – The Fast and The Furious

This race is the equivalent of the two leads, Dom (Vin Diesel) and Brian (Paul Walker), having a dick-measuring contest. After chasing down a bad guy, the pair have a quick drag race to see who can clear the train tracks before the approaching train hits them. Just for fun. Dom’s in his stripped-back muscle car and pretty boy Brian is in his flashy motor with all sorts of bells and whistles, because they’re different but also the same. And they make it across the line at the exact same time! Their dicks are precisely the same size! Hooray!

1:42 AM ·   0

Furious 7 Giveaway

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1:42 AM ·   0

Drunktown's Finest Review

When Robert Redford stood up to introduce Drunktown’s Finest at Sundance 2014, it was clear this project was close to his heart. More than seven years in the making, the project and its writer/director, Sydney Freeland, had been through the Sundance Institute’s 2009 Native Lab, 2010 Screenwriter’s Lab, and 2010 Director’s Lab. It should be noted that taking part in the Sundance Labs is no guarantee that a film will make it to the actual festival, but this film did. Freeland definitely knows a thing or two about tenacity.

On the film’s Kickstarter page, Freeland explains how a news segment she saw on ABC’s 20/20 that described her hometown as “Drunktown, U.S.A.,” inspired her to make this film: “This film is my effort to defy that judgment of my community. With your support, my film will show the world that label was wrong, and that my community has complexity, dimension and hope.”

Freeland set out to tell stories about the places and people familiar to her, and the result is honest and authentic. Drunktown’s Finest features a Native American cast, and is set on a Navajo reservation in Gallup, N.M.

The film follows three young Navajo characters as they struggle to find their way, on and off the reservation. There’s SickBoy, a young father-to-be (Jeremiah Bitsui), who struggles with impulse control, particularly around alcohol and violence, and as we meet him, he’s just trying to make it through the weekend without getting into trouble. Then there’s Nizhoni (Morning Star Wilson), a college-bound Christian who was adopted off the reservation and is now searching for her biological family. And finally, there’s Felixia (portrayed by first-time actress Carmen Moore), a transgender prostitute who is dying to be a model in the “Women of the Navajo” calendar. She just needs to get through the audition without anybody realizing that she wasn’t born with a woman's body. She lives with her traditional grandparents, who are accepting of her gender identity, as their worldview holds a place for this: In the Navajo culture, there is a “third gender,” something Freeland herself discovered only after leaving the reservation.

Lead actor Jeremiah Bitsui may not yet be a household name, but he’s no newcomer, either. His first acting credit came 20 years ago, when he played “Young Indian Boy” in Natural Born Killers. More recently, he had an eight-episode stint on Breaking Bad as “Victor.”

Lamenting the lack of multifaceted Native American characters in film, Freeland sought to portray a richer reality. Her characters are honest and multidimensional, transcending stereotypes — flawed as they may be, we come to genuinely care about them. Their stories intertwine as the film focuses on life in a community, and through their interactions, we are exposed to an incredible spectrum of emotion. Ultimately, each of the characters simply seeks comfort in their own skin, though they take very different routes in trying to reach that end.

There is no happy ending — Freeland explains that she does not believe in such things — but the film does end on a hopeful note. The issues are heavy indeed, but it’s not a heavy-handed film. It feels real, gritty, and ultimately, like a new beginning.

The photo of Jeremiah Bitsui in this article is by Jeremy Valdez.

1:41 AM ·   0

Ryan Reynolds Selfless Interview

SELF/LESS, making its in theater debut tonight, is a film about transhumanism and the implications of immortality. And while the premise is very much science fiction, the message is surprisingly down to earth. 

We sat down with the film's star Ryan Reynolds to get his thoughts on some of the more interesting themes of the film — that of sacrifice, the value of being mortal, and whether he would choose to live forever if given the chance. Check out our interview with him above, and check out the trailer below if you haven't had a chance to.

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