According to a new study, if you drive a flashy and / or expensive vehicle, you’re less likely to stop for pedestrians. In fact, the likelihood of slowing down decreases by 3% for every extra $1,000 that the vehicle is worth.

Researchers from the University of Nevada think that people who own expensive cars feel “a sense of superiority over other road users,” and therefore won’t empathize as easily with a pedestrian.

In order to reach their conclusion, the researchers asked volunteers to cross a sidewalk hundreds of times, filming and analyzing the way drivers respond.

Watch: BMW Driver Doesn’t Use Turn Signal, Cuts Off Audi And Causes Crash

While there were many shocking variables yielded by the results (such as gender and even race), the best predictor of whether a car would stop for the pedestrian was the vehicle’s value, as reported by KTVZ.

Ferrari F8 Tributo | Picture Guido ten Brink – SB Medien for Carscoops

“Disengagement and a lower ability to interpret thoughts and feelings of others along with feelings of entitlement and narcissism may lead to a lack of empathy for pedestrians,” when it comes to people who drive expensive cars.

To make matters worse, a Finnish study published last month found that many people who own flashy cars are more likely to be “argumentative, stubborn, disagreeable and unempathetic.”

“I had noticed that the ones most likely to run a red light, not give way to pedestrians and generally drive recklessly and too fast were often the ones driving fast German cars,” said Jan-Erik Lonnqvist of Helsinki University in a press release.

Lonnqvist even managed to find out what type of person is more likely to buy an expensive car, so he came up with a personality test for Finnish car owners.

“The answers were unambiguous: self-centered men who are argumentative, stubborn, disagreeable and unempathetic are much more likely to own a high status car such as an Audi, BMW or Mercedes. These personality traits explain the desire to own high-status products, and the same traits also explain why such people break traffic regulations more frequently than others.”

Of course, not everyone is like that, and there are plenty of conscientious people out there who enjoy driving expensive vehicles. However, if you’ve been wondering about the mental processes that make certain people misbehave in traffic while behind the wheel of a “nice car”, it would appear that we’re finally on our way to fully understanding this phenomenon.

Porsche 911 Cabrio | Photo Guido ten Brink – SB Medien for Carscoops