Archive for August, 2009

In recently doing some research on the historical traffic problems at Times Square, I came across the article above in the New York Times, circa 1911, which described the call of one Charles R. Lamb (formerly of the Municipal Art Society) to have another diagonal boulevard built in Manhattan, originating at 34th street — apparently in a massive, terrifying traffic circle — and running up to a plaza at 53rd Street.

Interestingly, the article makes the following claim, which runs precisely counter to what we now think of the way the diagonal of Broadway functions:

“The real difficulty with New York is this: that the only diagonal we have is Broadway. You can easily see the force of this point if you will remember that every man instinctively takes an angle street if he can because it makes the least distance. The automobile man does it: so does the truck-man; so does the pedestrian; everybody does.

And to just the extent that a person can turn from an angle, he will do it. You can see that at Times Square where Broadway cuts across Seventh Avenue. You can see it in Washington where the men that planned that city were wiser than the men that planned ours and where they cut frequent diagonal avenues with spacious circles at regular intervals. Just imagine what New York would be if the Times Square situation were repeated so frequently that a man could make his choice of taking an angle street or going around the block whenever he felt like it.”

Imagine indeed…

It’s one of those days, and I can’t resist. Via the Beeb:

Police said they were “shocked and appalled” when they pulled over the car south of Alice Springs in Australia’s Northern Territory.

The fine was for failing to ensure a child was wearing a seatbelt as well as driving an unregistered and uninsured vehicle.

In more “letting the kids drive” news — and further proof of how many unqualified drivers and parents there are out there — Canadian officials are looking for the vehicle occupants in question.

I was curious about the comment in the earliest post from Rich, the school bus driver, who noted “I don’t smoke, but I don’t see smoking a cigarette as a highly distracting activity and I doubt that there was ever a fatality in a school bus tied to the driver smoking while driving.”

My first reply was, ‘depends what they’re smoking.’ But then, of course, the first and most obvious reason we wouldn’t want school bus drivers smoking is second-hand smoke (see here for a round-up of the work done on the health effects of smoking in cars).

But I wouldn’t so cavalierly dismiss the idea that smoking could somehow be detrimental to driving (after all, we used to cavalierly dismiss the health risks of smoking itself). As a review of the literature (PDF here) on distracted driving compiled by Monash University researchers Kristie Young, Michael Regan, Mike Hammer (no, for real!) noted:

Smoking is a common activity among drivers, however it can distract drivers as they remove their hands from the wheel to light a cigarette, hold it for an extended period of time and put it out. Several studies have found that smoking while driving increases the risk of being involved in a crash (Brison, 1990; Christie, 1990; Violanti & Marshall, 1996). Brison used a case-controlled study to investigate the risk of a motor vehicle crash in smokers and non-smokers. A self-administered questionnaire was sent out to 1,000 people known to be involved in a motor accident and 1,100 controls who had not been involved in a crash, to obtain information on each driver’s smoking status. The results revealed that smokers had an increased risk of being involved in a motor accident than non-smokers and the tendency to smoke while driving further increased this risk. Brison concluded that the association between smoking and increased crash risk could be the result of three factors: distraction caused by smoking, behavioural differences between smokers and non-smokers, and carbon-monoxide toxicity. A review of the literature by Christie (1990) also revealed that smokers have an increased crash risk compared to non-smokers and this greater risk remains when age, gender, education, alcohol consumption and driving experience are accounted for.

Again, the studies reviewed by Christie offered a range of explanations for the smoking crash risk association, ranging from smoking being a physical distraction to decrements in driving performance due to high levels of carbon-monoxide. Regardless of the exact cause of smokers’ increased risk of being involved in a crash, it is clear that smoking while driving is a hazard. Indeed, research conducted by Stutts et al. (2001) revealed that smoking was a source of distraction in 0.9% of distraction-related crashes, which equated to approximately 12,780 crashes over the 5 year period examined.

Obviously it’s hard to disentangle the physical effects versus the broader socio-demographic factors — that people who smoke are riskier drivers for other reasons — but it’s also hard not to imagine that looking for a cigarette, fumbling for a lighter, etc., don’t equate to potentially dangerous eyes-off-road-time while operating heavy machinery at high speed.

A Virginia man helps birds cross the road, gets traffic fine, notes the Washington Post.

“They were walking like gentlemen,” Vamosi said, upright and confident. “Like the Beatles on ‘Abbey Road.’ “

The law notes that “pedestrians shall not carelessly or maliciously interfere with the orderly passage of vehicles” (as if that last phrase can actually apply to Fairfax County traffic). No word on whether this applies to avian pedestrians.

I say the trooper’s response should have been: No harm, no fowl.

Looking at this page of state-by-state laws on texting and various forms of phoning while driving, compiled by the Governors Highway Safety Association, I was intrigued to note a column reserved for the drivers of school buses, and that a number of states (16) have a law prohibiting them from any form of phone use — even when that state does not actually ban the use of a hand-held device. Only one state at the moment actually prohibits school bus drivers from texting while driving, an example of how quickly the technology and practice has arisen.

But the school bus driver distinction is an interesting one to me; are we saying that is not OK for the drivers of vehicles carrying our children to talk on the phone and drive, and if so, why? But if this is not OK, then why is it OK for the drivers of every other vehicle around that bus to be talking on the phone, and why is it OK for parents with their kids in the car to talk while on the phone? I think this ties in to a certain feeling we have about risk: We worry about being in someone else’s hands (even a school bus, statistically safer than private transportation), but maintain a feeling of what’s been called “the illusion of control” when we are the perceived masters of our own fate.

What if this guy had come up against this guy?

Photo by nycblondieandbrownie/Flickr

I just finished a curious sort of early 21st century meal. I received a Twitter update that the “Schnitzel and Things” truck was in nearby Brooklyn Heights, so I hopped on the bike, grabbed me some schnitzel (and some sides), and returned home.

I wonder if this sort of trip (particularly non-motorized) is even captured by transportation planners; i.e., do “mobile food trucks” appear in Trip Generation or Parking Generation? (though the latter is probably moot in this regard as I’m not sure how many New Yorkers drive to the mobile food truck, though I’m sure they do for those Korean tacos in L.A.). More broadly, this food-transportation nexus is worthy of further study — it is, after all, one of the key reasons people leave the house. What do these invisible networks look like, how many food deliveries are made every night by NYC’s mobile army of deliverymen? I’m not sure if it matches in efficiency or intricacy the legendary dabbawala, or “tiffin wallahs” of India (particularly Mumbai).

Reader David notes that when bottlenecks develop at intersections in Ghana, or traffic grows abnormally congested, it’s not uncommon for people to spontaneously take matters into their own hands. The video is of an American friend (perhaps the advertised ‘D.J. Mayonnaise Hands’?) of his who decided to pitch in; I’m not sure he’s accomplishing much, traffic-wise, but I’d give his technique an ‘A.’

Off topic here, I know, but just briefly: At my local Post Office on Friday, the one with the reliably epic lines and the smudged plexiglass bulletproof windows (through which you struggle to hear the clerk), a woman ahead of me purchased a $25 money order, which evidently needed to be mailed to the state court system by a certain date to avoid some kind of fine.

So she requested that the clerk postmark the letter, to prove that she had dropped it off that day. “We don’t do postmarks,” the clerk said. I did a mental double-take. Don’t do postmarks? What’s the Post Office for? You can get insurance, delivery confirmation, tracking — but you can’t a postmark? The woman was as perplexed as I was. It seemed the letters were postmarked at a different facility. There may be logic in this, but how difficult would it to be to stamp the odd letter or two when so requested?

“You need to get a ‘Certificate of Mailing,’ ” the clerk said. “It’s $1.50.”

A small sum, perhaps, though probably not to the woman ahead of me.

Reader Jay sends in a link to this interesting take on the traditional “your speed is” feedback signs (”speed trailers” as they are sometimes called). From what information I can find they seem to be the work of the ad agency Cramer-Krasselt, possibly for the Wisconsin town of Elm Grove, but I’m not sure if it’s a print PSA or if these signs have actually appeared on the side of the road. Has anyone actually seen them?

Via Urban Cartography, I love this image of a train moving through an urban marketplace that seems to have figured out to the inch where it can exist in relation to the passing train (and the retractable awnings can be drawn back when the time comes). I believe this is somewhere in India, and I’ve seen video footage similar to this before — quite a remarkable process (and it really makes our supermarkets with wide aisles, parking lots, etc. seem incredibly like an incredibly inefficient use of space).