CONTACTTRAFFICABOUT TOM VANDERBILTOTHER WRITING CONTACT ABOUT THE BOOK

Archive for September 7th, 2010

Warning: Hologram Ahead

It seems that James Cameron doesn’t have a lock on innovative 3-D imagery: As the Globe and Mail reports:

Motorists travelling on 22nd Street in West Vancouver will be confronted with a 3D image of a little girl chasing a ball in the street starting next Tuesday. The girl will be an optical illusion, but the scenario is very real, according to David Dunne of the BCAA Traffic Safety Foundation.

I’m all for illusion-based traffic calming techniques that create the sensation that drivers are driving faster than they really are — and I realize there is no greater challenge in traffic engineering than managing driver speed — but I would have reservations about putting an imaginary obstacle in the middle of the road (perhaps putting the child on the side of the road would be merely enough?). For one, it may, however unlikely, provoke the driver into taking evasive action, thus getting into real trouble. For another, the presence of false hazards may reduce our vigilance to real hazards. And one wonders if this would open the door to 3-D billboards and other projections.

But what do readers think?

(horn honk to David Levinson)

[del.icio.us] [Digg] [Facebook] [Google] [MySpace] [Slashdot] [StumbleUpon] [Yahoo!]
Posted on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 at 7:32 am by: Tom Vanderbilt
15 Comments. Click here to leave a comment.
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

[del.icio.us] [Digg] [Facebook] [Google] [MySpace] [Slashdot] [StumbleUpon] [Yahoo!]
U.S. Paperback UK Paperback
Traffic UK
Drive-on-the-left types can order the book from Amazon.co.uk.

For UK publicity enquiries please contact Rosie Glaisher at Penguin.

Upcoming Talks

[del.icio.us] [Digg] [Facebook] [Google] [MySpace] [Slashdot] [StumbleUpon] [Yahoo!]
Twitter
September 2010
M T W T F S S
« Aug   Oct »
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930