Because architects can't afford to buy nice cars
Now that I think about it, most of the architects I know aren't terribly good drivers nor even care about cars. It's embarrassing, though, to find architects as a group in the top five for accidents, speeding tickets and moving violations.
Who's the better driver: soccer mom or lawyer? - Insure your carBut many insurance executives, Finnegan said, assume highly educated professionals such as doctors, lawyers and architects are less likely to be risky drivers -- exactly the opposite of what the review found. (Engineers, by the way, ranked 10th among the 40 professions analyzed, with a higher-than-average accident rate of 94 per 1,000 professionals.)
Finnegan can't say exactly why these professions rose to the top of the smash-up pile, but he has some theories.
"Anything we say is speculative," Finnegan said, "but these tend to be highly educated professionals . . . who are used to having the world pay attention to them."
In other words, the very traits that may help doctors, lawyers and architects in their professions -- call it confidence, or self-assurance, or downright arrogance -- make them riskier on the road.
There could be other explanations as well, such as huge workloads leading to fatigue or excessive cell phone use on the road.
Interestingly, doctors and lawyers fell to the middle of the pack when Finnegan looked at speeding tickets and moving violations. Architects, however, remained at the top of all three.
Check this statistic out:
Occupations that get the most moving-violation citations
1. Student 121
2. Manual laborer 112
3. Architect 106
Sweet. But maybe it'd be cooler if that were speeding tickets and not running red lights...
* Ray, 3/01/2004 10:19:44 AM
