The hit-and-run and human nature

After reading about yet another hit-and-run fatality in DC, I got to thinking about what happens in the mind of someone who has just killed a pedestrian with their vehicle. There seems to be an inordinate number of hit-and-run incidents - as opposed to hit-and-stop-to-help-and-face-the-consequences incidents (or maybe those are just not reported as much). Anyway, I am imagining that when someone strikes a pedestrian (accidentally), some sort of detachment occurs, some sort of denial of what's happened - a rationalization. Or maybe that comes later: "I'm a good person, it was an accident. There's no sense in ruining my life too. No one has to know." And then the cover-up happens. How many un-caught hit-and-runners are out there living with a terrible secret?

I think the hit-and-run mentality comes from the same instinct that would cause a person hold a door open for a stranger but then get in his car and cut someone off and give them the finger - it's the impersonal detachment of anonymity that one has inside their car. One's personal vehicle is perceived as one's personal space. So when an outside force intrudes upon that space, it causes some sort of cognitive dissonance.

This might be one for the psychology journals.