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Traffic Safety Film of the Week »

snarltraffic

A sort of social-networking version of the California Highway Patrol’s incident report page, with individual drivers reporting on Sydney congestion zones. The unpleasant implication, of course, is that people are sending and reading these Twitters while driving. And, really, is the chance of reading a Twitter about the spot you’re driving in at a useful moment any more reliable than hearing about via a radio traffic report? (i.e., about 3% of the time?)

Some kind reader asked me a while ago, by the way, about sending out Twitter updates. Being an old analog writerly type sans smart-phone, I work hard to resist data ubiquity (and I really prefer the long form), but curious if there’s any desire out there for people to get Twitter posts of what’s on the blog?

(via City of Sound)

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 12th, 2009 at 4:13 pm and is filed under Cars, Cities, Congestion. 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.

4 Responses to “snarltraffic”

  1. Brian Ogilvie Says:
    June 12th, 2009 at 5:59 pm

    Oh my god, no Twitter updates please! It’s easy enough to follow the blog via the RSS feed.

  2. anuj Says:
    June 13th, 2009 at 1:35 pm

    I agree with #1 above. Easy enough with RSS.

    Twitter would be cool tho’ for one liners or traffic related thoughts that are too short for the blog..

  3. aaron Says:
    June 18th, 2009 at 7:20 am

    It’s not twitter’s fault, it’s poor traffic management and inadequate roads. Few people would attempt these things while driving if traffic was free flowing and they were actively driving.

  4. aaron Says:
    June 18th, 2009 at 7:22 am

    If it wasn’t twitter, they’d be doing something else as dangerous or worse. Probably becoming angry and aggressive.

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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:

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

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