THE PORTRAYAL OF DRIVING ON PRIME-TIME COMMERCIAL TELEVISION 1975-1979

The study examined how driving is shown on commercial television programs during prime time (8-11 p.m. EST). A sample week of all prime-time weekly fictional series was videotaped during the fall of 1975, 1976, 1977 and 1979. In all, 223 shows encompassing 174.5 hours of television time were examined. Each driving incident lasting five seconds or longer was systematically analyzed by trained coders. In all, 784 scenes were analyzed, for each of 67 attributes.