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Archive for July 11th, 2011

Problem Drivers Are Problem People

From an interesting op-ed, in which I am quoted, in The Canberra Times:

Not long after Henry Ford drove the car into mainstream American life, a new area of psychology began to flourish. Its aim, in layman’s terms, was to understand why apparently normal people become complete arseholes behind a steering wheel. Leon Brody’s 1955 book, The psychology of problem drivers, concluded that ”problem drivers are problem people; or rather, people with problems, including problems of which they often are not aware”. Until then, researchers had believed most crashes were caused by physical shortcomings such as slow reflexes, poor eyesight and glare-recovery time. But, as Herbert Stack wrote in the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine in 1956, ”[In] all of our studies, these characteristics have been found to have little significance. The real causes of accidents are far more deep-seated. They have to do with our attitudes, our emotions, and our judgments.”

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Posted on Monday, July 11th, 2011 at 9:10 am by: Tom Vanderbilt
9 Comments. Click here to leave a comment.

Fogbrooms

Wondering what ever became of New Jersey’s ‘fogbrooms,’ as per this Time article, 1967:

Ordinary hazards of driving are compounded in New Jersey, where meteorology, topography and industrial air pollution often produce dense fogs that suddenly blot out the road ahead. Fog is so familiar a problem in some sections of the state that permanent electric signs have been erected along the New Jersey Turnpike to flash warnings of fog and to cut speed limits. But New Jersey motorists may soon have a clearer view. By borrowing a discovery used to produce water in Chile, state transportation officials hope to be able to sweep long stretches of highway clear of fog.

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Posted on Monday, July 11th, 2011 at 9:07 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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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.

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