CONTACTTRAFFICABOUT TOM VANDERBILTOTHER WRITING CONTACT ABOUT THE BOOK

How to Create Traffic Chaos

Give away free gas:

“FORT PIERCE,FL — One man was arrested and at least four traffic accidents occurred Wednesday afternoon in a rush to get free gas, said Fort Pierce Police Capt. Greg Kirk.

Famed Stuart attorney Willie Gary and local hip-hop/R&B radio station X102.3 sponsored a free gas giveaway from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. to the first 102 listeners who went to the Wal-Mart gas station at 5100 Okeechobee Road, Kirk said.

But more than 3,000 people showed up, Kirk said.

“We would have redirected traffic and had more officers there, that’s for sure,” Kirk said, if officials had known there would be such a turnout.

From 30 to 40 police officers and St. Lucie County sheriff’s deputies were sent to the gas station to control the crowd and traffic, Kirk said. St. Lucie County Fire Rescue also responded as a precaution.

During the giveaway, officers said, they charged Michael Truitt, 21, of Fort Pierce, with three counts of battery for hitting a woman in the back of the head and hitting police officers.”

The onetime Domino’s Pizza “30 minutes or less” guarantee, which encouraged drivers to act like maniacs, was an earlier lesson that extreme financial incentives and traffic are not a good mix.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 25th, 2008 at 12:44 pm and is filed under Cars, Drivers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Traffic Tom Vanderbilt

How We Drive is the companion blog to Tom Vanderbilt’s New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canada, Penguin in the U.K, and in languages other than English by a number of other fine publishers worldwide.

Please send tips, news, research papers, links, photos (bad road signs, outrageous bumper stickers, spectacularly awful acts of driving or parking or anything traffic-related), or ideas for my Slate.com Transport column to me at: info@howwedrive.com.

For publicity inquiries, please contact Kate Runde at Vintage: krunde@randomhouse.com.

For editorial inquiries, please contact Zoe Pagnamenta at The Zoe Pagnamenta Agency: zoe@zpagency.com.

For speaking engagement inquiries, please contact
Jenna Meulemans at the Knopf Speaker Bureau.

Order Traffic from:

Amazon | B&N | Borders
Random House | Powell’s

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Traffic UK
Drive-on-the-left types can order the book from Amazon.co.uk.

For UK publicity enquiries please contact Rosie Glaisher at Penguin.

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