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Total Recall

My latest Slate column is up, an expansion of some thoughts earlier expressed here (the proving grounds).

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at 7:11 pm and is filed under Etc.. 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.

2 Responses to “Total Recall”

  1. Jack Says:
    February 22nd, 2010 at 8:14 am

    Another great column and please excuse me for copying some of your most important messages: “intentional acceleration is a far bigger problem than unintentional acceleration. Unfortunately, it is far easier to regulate and recall faulty vehicles than faulty drivers.”

    “The majority of cars on the road today leave the factory with safety defects built into them: an ability to go well beyond the legal speed limit on any U.S. public road”.

    Exactly.

  2. Jason Says:
    March 3rd, 2010 at 2:14 am

    The pure rationality of the 19 deaths vs 21,000 deaths argument fails to account for the importance of ’cause’ in human cognition.

    For example, although homicide presents a much lower mortality risk than heart disease, murder is more feared. People feel they should not be exposed to risks imposed on them by others.

    The questions raised here are not only about managing risk in a system, but questions of justice. Perception is reality. People care more about an externally imposed than self-imposed risk to their life. I wondered if the unit of analysis (deaths/year) in your field might have somewhat blinkered you to that perspective.

    Love the blog though!

    cheers,

    Jason

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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.

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