The Wave - A Driving Experiment

The other day I was roadtrippin', and as you know I love to study human interactions. So I decided I was going to wave at every passing car. I don't mean the guys on the other side of the road; you would never have time to see their reaction. I mean waving at the people who are beside you.

As a warning, if you ever try this yourself, there is a level of cautiousness you must take. You could easily become distracted if you wave at someone, thus resulting in a very serious collision. Always keep an eye on the road, never allow yourself to become distracted. I take no responsibility in what you do.

Anyways, the idea is simple. Wave at anyone you can. I didn't do this, I had my friend driving with me do it. He would wave at every car that went past us. Here is what we came up with:

Over the course of 2 hours, we encountered 149 passenger cars, 15 semis, and 1 bus. Of those 165 vehicles we found that:

102 waved back
10 smiled
35 ignored us/didn't see us
9 started dancing in some way
5 were visibly upset but didn't do anything
4 flipped us off

I was surprised we didn't have a more diverse reaction from people. You can almost make a spectrum of the reactions. There's the really happy, happy, neutral, upset, very upset, and angry. However, I would have to say that an overwhelming amount of people simply waved back at us. That my friends, is a succesful experiment.