CONTACTTRAFFICABOUT TOM VANDERBILTOTHER WRITING CONTACT ABOUT THE BOOK

Archive for December 31st, 2008

‘Zombie Driving’

Over at the Times (of London), Giles Smith tests some new semi-automated cars.

“All in all, it’s hard not to feel that today’s cars are increasingly sending drivers a message. And the message is: “You’re hopeless. You fall asleep, your lane discipline is atrocious, you can’t park, you hunt for leftover Jelly Beans in the coin tray when you’re meant to be concentrating on the road ahead and you’ve forgotten entire chapters of the Highway Code, assuming you ever really knew them. From now on, I’m driving.”

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Posted on Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 at 9:37 am by: Tom Vanderbilt
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The Four E’s

Engineering, enforcement, and education are the holy trinity of traffic safety — add a fourth, the economy, and it helps to explain encouraging stories like this one, which reports the state of Virginia is on track to record its lowest number of road fatalities in 40 years.

There’s a quote from William Lucy, whose study, “Mortality Risk Associated With Leaving Home: Recognizing the Relevance of the Built Environment,” is cited in Traffic:

Hard economic times tend to affect people’s psychology and behavior, said William Lucy, a professor of urban and environmental planning at the University of Virginia. They tend to act more cautiously in what they buy, whether they move, and how they regard their jobs, he said.

“Maybe [they're] more cautious about driving,” said Lucy, who’s been tracking traffic data for 15 years.

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Posted on Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 at 8:49 am by: Tom Vanderbilt
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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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U.S. Paperback UK Paperback
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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