April 9, 2008.
California Office of Traffic Safety Summit
San Francisco, CA.
May 19, 2009
University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies
Bloomington, MN
June 23, 2009
Driving Assessment 2009
Big Sky, Montana
June 26, 2009
PRI World Congress
Rotterdam, The Netherlands
June 27, 2009
Day of Architecture
Utrecht, The Netherlands
July 13, 2009
Association of Transportation Safety Information Professionals (ATSIP)
Phoenix, AZ.
August 12-14
Texas Department of Transportation “Save a Life Summit”
San Antonio, Texas
September 2, 2009
Governors Highway Safety Association Annual Meeting
Savannah, Georgia
September 11, 2009
Oregon Transportation Summit
Portland, Oregon
October 8
Honda R&D Americas
Raymond, Ohio
October 10-11
INFORMS Roundtable
San Diego, CA
October 21, 2009
California State University-San Bernardino, Leonard Transportation Center
San Bernardino, CA
November 5
Southern New England Planning Association Planning Conference
Uncasville, Connecticut
January 6
Texas Transportation Forum
Austin, TX
January 19
Yale University
(with Donald Shoup; details to come)
Monday, February 22
Yale University School of Architecture
Eero Saarinen Lecture
Friday, March 19
University of Delaware
Delaware Center for Transportation
April 5-7
University of Utah
Salt Lake City
McMurrin Lectureship
April 19
International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association (Organization Management Workshop)
Austin, Texas
Monday, April 26
Edmonton Traffic Safety Conference
Edmonton, Canada
Monday, June 7
Canadian Association of Road Safety Professionals
Niagara Falls, Ontario
Wednesday, July 6
Fondo de Prevención Vial
Bogotá, Colombia
Tuesday, August 31
Royal Automobile Club
Perth, Australia
Wednesday, September 1
Australasian Road Safety Conference
Canberra, Australia
Wednesday, September 22
Wisconsin Department of Transportation’s
Traffic Incident Management Enhancement Program
Statewide Conference
Wisconsin Dells, WI
Wednesday, October 20
Rutgers University
Center for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation
Piscataway, NJ
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Ontario Injury Prevention Resource Centre
Injury Prevention Forum
Toronto
Monday, May 2
Idaho Public Driver Education Conference
Boise, Idaho
Tuesday, June 2, 2011
California Association of Cities
Costa Mesa, California
Sunday, August 21, 2011
American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Attitudes: Iniciativa Social de Audi
Madrid, Spain
April 16, 2012
Institute for Sensible Transport Seminar
Gardens Theatre, QUT
Brisbane, Australia
April 17, 2012
Institute for Sensible Transport Seminar
Centennial Plaza, Sydney
Sydney, Australia
April 19, 2012
Institute for Sensible Transport Seminar
Melbourne Town Hall
Melbourne, Australia
January 30, 2013
University of Minnesota City Engineers Association Meeting
Minneapolis, MN
January 31, 2013
Metropolis and Mobile Life
School of Architecture, University of Toronto
February 22, 2013
ISL Engineering
Edmonton, Canada
March 1, 2013
Australian Road Summit
Melbourne, Australia
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March 23rd, 2009 at 2:46 pm
I have ranted about this for a long time. Someone in the local media here in Austin told me they intentionally use passive voice and “blame” the tools, not the humans, because at press time no one has been found guilty of anything. If they had reported “So-and-so killed four people while driving the wrong way…” they’re opening themselves up to a lawsuit. They could use the weasel-word “allegedly”, but to be extra safe they just saw the vehicle was on the wrong side of the road as if the Highway Fairy just dropped it there out of the blue.
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:32 pm
It gets into interesting semantic territory for sure; if one shot a gun and killed someone in a hunting accident, would the journalist say the victim ‘was killed by the gun.’? I suppose this would be wrapped up in the victim ‘was killed by an errant shot” or “in an accident” or some such. And is ‘killed’ per se the same as murder, which implies intentional killing? Legally, does the word ‘kill’ imply causality, I wonder?
It reminds me of the “Family Guy” episode in which a character said the words “Laura Bush killed a guy”; which, in the strictest sense, she did. But the show of course caused a certain amount of outrage.
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Quote: “Finally, our habit of dehumanizing the actions of cars…”
Well, cars aren’t human so that’s fair enough. It seems like David Alpert is making the same mistake he complains of, substituting the car for the driver.
March 23rd, 2009 at 5:04 pm
The “killer highway” label irritates me as well. Google search here.
It’s like granting volition to a mix of asphalt, gravel and painted lines.
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:02 pm
As a journalist, I feel the same way about car crash reporting. For a creative writing class (MFA level, so it’s very serious business), I wrote a story triggered by the Las Vegas Sun’s Twitter feed. Almost every other tweet is about a car crash. So I imagined what actually happened beyond just the details of how many intersections they ran through, when it happened, and how many were injured. That way I could humanize the person behind the wheel as I’m pretty much not allowed to do in work.
I also discovered I like writing about largely unlikable people.
March 24th, 2009 at 3:30 am
This is so deeply ingrained that it’s hard to avoid in our conversation or writing. I wrote a short post yesterday about parking & driver choices, and most of it took several re-writes to get it from the passive to the active voice. Even now, re-reading it, I can see that I’ve failed twice in the photo captions!
The other linguistic oddity that I think you point out in the book is that we don’t make the same mistake with bikes. It’s always “the cyclist who . . .” rather than “the bike then . . .”
March 25th, 2009 at 4:09 am
One of the most obvious manifestations of this must be the tendency of people to say “the roads are dangerous” if, for example, asked why they don’t cycle. It’s obviously not the roads that are dangerous but some road users. But to say “motorists drive dangerously” would for most people be an admission of their own involvement in creating the problem. So they blame some inanimate object.
March 25th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
This writer is also in agreement. Well said, Tom.
May 18th, 2011 at 5:22 am
Ah, that is because the
driving licence has become a sacred right which absolves the driver of all responsibility…