Traffic
I do not read many books. But I did recently finish Tom Vanderbilt's Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do. I am posting these quotes from it, not so much for anyone to read or because I have anything to add, but because I wanted to keep them saved somewhere in case I ever want to use them.On traffic safety vs. homeland security:
"Grimly tally the number of people who have been killed by terrorism in the United States since the State Department began keeping records in the 1960s, and you'll get a total of less than 5,000 - roughly the same number, it has been pointed out, as those who have been struck by lightning. But each year, with some fluctuation, the number of people killed in car crashes in the United States tops 40,000. More people are killed on the roads each month than were killed in the September 11 attacks. In the wake of those attacks, polls found that many citizens thought it was acceptable to curtail civil liberties to help counter the threat of terrorism, to help preserve our "way of life." Those same citizens, meanwhile, in polls and in personal behavior, have routinely resisted traffic measures designed to reduce the annual death toll (e.g., lowering speed limits, introducing more red-light cameras, stiffer blood alcohol limits, stricter cell phone laws).
"Ironically, the normal business of life that we are so dedicated to preserving is actually more dangerous to the average person than the threats against it. Road deaths in the three months after 9/11, for example, were 9 percent higher than those during the similar periods in the two years before. Given that airline passenger numbers dropped during this same period, it can be assumed some people chose to drive rather than fly. It might be precisely because of all the vigilance that no further deaths due to terrorism have occurred in the United States since 9/11 - even as more than two hundred thousand people have died on the roads. This raises the question of why we do not mount a similarly concerted effort to improve the "security" of the nation's roads; instead, in the wake of 9/11, newspapers have been filled with stories of traffic police being taken off the roads and assigned to counterterrorism."
And here's a good summary of the main conflicts of driving:
"We all think we're better than the average driver. We think cars are the risk when on foot; we think pedestrians act dangerously when we're behind the wheel. We want safer cars so we can drive more dangerously. Driving, with its exhilarating speed and the boundless personal mobility it grants us, is strangely life-affirming but also, for most of us, the most deadly presence in our lives. We all want to be individuals on the road, but smooth-flowing traffic requires conformity. We want all the lights to be green, unless we are on the intersecting road, in which case we want those lights to be green. We want little traffic on our own street but a convenient ten-lane highway blazing just nearby. We all wish the other person would not drive, so that our trip would be faster. What's best for us on the road is often not best for everyone else, and vice versa."
Labels: transportation
posted by Peter @ 17:11
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