CONTACTTRAFFICABOUT TOM VANDERBILTOTHER WRITING CONTACT ABOUT THE BOOK

Archive for February 9th, 2010

The Bird, the Wave, and the Shaka

My latest Slate column is up, and the subject is the informal language of the road (and yes I know about the Australian ‘waggling pinkie,’ but for editing reasons, etc., it got cut). For space reasons I also didn’t get into the whole gamut of bicyclist/motorcyclist/pedestrian gestures — though I remember at one Brooklyn crosswalk I was turning right and a person about to enter the crosswalk did an elaborate bow/sweep of the hand to urge me through, to which my reply was to try to apologize for violating the right of way. Then there was a secondary round of strange gestures in response to the first. And then, of course, the driver behind me honked.

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Posted on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 at 1:34 pm 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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