Archive for September 23rd, 2008

Photo by Jase Mueller/Flickr

Have you ever felt particularly menaced (or amused) by an approaching car as you crossed in a crosswalk, or as you looked up to see it in the rear-view mirror of your own car? Did you ever think it might be because it felt, strangely, as if an angry (or happy) face was looking at you? Would this alter the way you behaved toward the vehicle?

In a new paper by Sonja Windhager, et al., “Face to Face: The Perception of Automotive Design,” published in the latest issue of Human Nature, the authors, working from the idea that evolution has primed us to be extremely sensitive to the human face (drawing key inferences after a mere 100 ms), wonder if we might not draw similar information from inanimate objects — like cars — that just happen to have seemingly facial features.
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Photo by Markbaard/Flickr

While recently driving in Maine, I couldn’t help notice the proliferation of skid marks on certain stretches of relatively empty rural roads. Sometimes, they seemed of the standard “lock ‘em up” variety — straight and jet black — as if the driver had been called to suddenly stop for an obstacle in the road (and it’s said the presence of these is a good indicator of potential moose-spotting).

In other cases, they seemed tied to some actual off-road crash, as in the photo above. Skid marks, to the crash investigator, are like fingerprints, or any other bit of forensic evidence. They tell a story. Often, there is little else at a crash site from which to draw information, and so the investigators peer into the patterns, and measure the lengths, of these black tracings, to try and reconstruct a narrative. “Gap skids,” for example, show a driver was braking, releasing the brake, then braking again. “Yaw marks” hint that a tire was both rolling and skidding, suggesting a loss of control. Some skids may, of course, be due to acceleration, not braking, in which case they will begin dark and lighten in the direction of travel.

But I would also come across skids that made no sense. Strange elliptical loops, figure-8s at stop-signs, wavy single tracks that looked like unfurled ribbons, marks that crossed from one side of the road to the other with no apparent logic. That’s when I was told of an art form that was heretofore unknown to me. “Road art,” as one Downeaster called it, in which drivers, predominantly young males (who else?), carefully construct geometric patterns through the careful application of burning rubber. There’s even a documentary film about it.

It seems driven by two things. One, the human eternal desire to make marks upon the landscape — for territoriality or some more exalted purpose — not so distinct, I suppose, from Maine’s famous petroglyphs. Another, the film suggests, might be sheer exuberance, as a lobsterman might celebrate a good catch by doing a few doughnuts at the town pier. I suppose the “skid art” could be read as an indicator of economic health; after all, it represents sheer surplus. It costs money — in gas and in tires — to do abstract expressionism on asphalt. The blacker and more intricate the skids, the better the economy. Given Maine’s current fortunes, and the cost of fuel, fresh skid art may be a rare commodity.

One of the stranger aspects of all this, as I was told, is that sometimes drivers will try to create skid marks that look like particularly dramatic crashes — e.g., a car that veered wildly off-road. This, curiously, intersects with the work of an artist named Nancy Manter, whose work Road Art (the collection is shown below), was, she notes, “inspired by reports of several fatal car accidents on a back-country road in Maine.”

She continues:

I became aware of the overlapping skid marks on these roads, and the tragedy of the teenage drivers who lost their lives that year. Over time, I observed that these marks began to build up a history. They seemed to be a series of collaborations between “silent partners,” made up of skid marks by the intersection of cars and lost souls. I, too, began to overlay my own skid marks on top of existing ones, but with far less intensity and speed. I thought of them as an homage to these lost souls, recalling memories from my own reckless driving on back country roads in Maine.

Was there some similar impulse at work in the “road graffiti” artists? Were their furious etchings some deep response to the dangers of the road? So here’s the curious condition: Driving down Maine roads, particularly at night, when the black traces seem more ominous, you don’t know what the skid marks mean.