CONTACTTRAFFICABOUT TOM VANDERBILTOTHER WRITING CONTACT ABOUT THE BOOK

Archive for October 15th, 2009

Jaywalking Redux

For more shockingly dangerous pedestrian behavior, I present Streetfilms and Mark Gorton.

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Posted on Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 10:26 am by: Tom Vanderbilt
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The Jaywalking Menace

Also in the Globe, is it just me or nowhere in this story is there any actual indication that the crash statistics referred to are the result of jaywalking or other pedestrian action? Given that academic studies attribute the vast bulk of pedestrian-car crashes to driver —not pedestrian — behavior, I’m always amazed by the sheer torrent of anti-jaywalking stories in the country’s newspapers, reflective of an old bias against non-vehicular modes.

After giving these eye-catching scare statistics about pedestrian danger, the story then interviews a number of people who are jaywalking — the only problem being they actually weren’t struck by cars, which doesn’t exactly prove the main point.

In Peter Norton’s book Fighting Traffic, there’s an interesting discussion of an old campaign to come up with a term, a particular pejorative, for “jaywalking” drivers. Maybe it’s time to revisit that idea.

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Posted on Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 10:03 am by: Tom Vanderbilt
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The $600 Speeding Ticket

Around 1909, a speeding ticket was a price proposition in today’s terms, notes the Boston Globe:

Speeding fines were enormous, starting at $25 - the equivalent of $600 today, according to the scholarly website www.measuringworth.com.

Of course, no one had a speedometer in his car to know how fast he was going. Nor did the police have any way to record speeds, or patrol cars to catch violators - though they probably could have tracked them down.

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Posted on Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 9:50 am by: Tom Vanderbilt
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The Questions We Should Ask

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Advocates for a new law argue that families of those killed or maimed deserve greater sense of justice than a traffic ticket brings. However, a conviction for negligent driving doesn’t carry much steeper punishment. Typically, a first-time offender gets probation or a deferred sentence.

“Do they need an automatic license suspension or do they need driver retraining. These are the questions that we should ask,” Hiller said. He noted that people who don’t control their vicious dogs face more criminal culpability than drivers for negligence behind the wheel.

New York’s own traffic justice symposium is coming up — details here.

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Posted on Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 9:42 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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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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