Archive for the ‘Drivers’ Category

Quality Planning, whose research shows up a bit in Traffic, has released a new study which shows that “male drivers are cited for reckless driving 3.41 times more than women.”

The data was derived thusly:

“Quality Planning said it analyzed 12 months’ of 2007 policyholder information for U.S. drivers, comparing the number of moving and nonmoving violations for both men and women. Overall, the data shows that men are much more likely to receive a traffic citation than women, and that this difference in driving behavior is consistent across all age groups.”

Men do drive more miles, of course, and I’m not sure if this was corrected for in some way (women may drive recklessly but their exposure is lower, so less chance of being caught; or maybe male traffic cops really are less likely to issue tickets to women — after all, as this study by Michael Makowsky and Thomas Strattman found, “ceteris parabis, young females have the lowest probability of receiving a speeding ticket”), but the gender difference seems much larger in any case than any mileage discrepancy.

Two other points worth noting:

“The resulting accidents caused by men lead to more expensive claims than those caused by women.”

“Women drivers were also about 27 percent less likely than men to be found at fault (1-49 percent negligent) when involved in an accident, according to the company.”

(Tap of the horn to UC-Berkeley’s Traffic Safety Center)

It’s hardly news in the traffic psychology world that people who routinely speed fall under the category of what are called “sensation-seekers.” But it’s always interesting to see just who those people are, and how this behavior correlates with other areas of their life.

A study by Mark Grinblatt, a professor of finance at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Matti Keloharju, a finance professor at the Helsinki School of Economics, titled “Sensation Seeking, Overconfidence and Trading Activity” (available here), gets at that question in an interesting way.

They had access to an interesting data set: A record of investing behavior among Finnish households that had, scattered amongst its sub-categories, the number of speeding tickets those households received. And they found an interesting relationship: “Each additional speeding ticket tends to increase turnover by 11%.” In other words, the people who sped the most, traded the most.

The economists were really looking to find evidence of whether behavioral attributes could explain trading volume, but the finding is just as relevant for driving. Whether it was down to sensation-seeking or, perhaps, overconfidence, the riskiest investors took the most risks on the road. And given that this was Finland, where speeding tickets for violations over 15 kph are related to one’s income, the risks one took could bear a high financial (and personal) cost. Interestingly, those who traded most didn’t see better performance than those who traded less (not to mention all the money they probably lost to speeding tickets). And it will surprise no one that “sports cars,” as a variable, were more linked to the most active traders, though not as much as speeding tickets.

Is what Mary Roach suggested my book should have been called, and every time I read a story like this one, the point is driven home.

Detailing a police sting operation in Montclair, N.J., to reduce the number of pedestrians killed in crosswalks as they legally go about their walking (the most common way pedestrians are killed in NYC and apparently parts of N.J.), the story notes:

During the operation, dubbed Cops in Crosswalks, the percentage of motorists who stopped rose from 11 percent in June to 49 percent in August, and more than 800 drivers received $100 traffic-violation tickets, said Sgt. Daniel Pronti, of the Montclair Police Department.

“Most people who committed the violations weren’t even aware they committed a violation,” Sergeant Pronti said. “We learned that education was key to our ultimate goal of making people feel safe.”

Uh, I actually thought the education was supposed to happen before the drivers got their license. And we wonder why Europeans think our driving tests are a joke.

The Washington Post reports that Tysons Corner, poster child for “Edge City” sprawl, sees heavier traffic counts at lunch as it does during the morning or evening peaks.

Not everyone, like this lunch commuter, was so worked up about it.

“We drive a mile at most,” he said. “Even with traffic, it’s not more than a couple of minutes.”

Why even take such a short drive?

On a recent sunny weekday, four young financiers got out of Mike Eisenberg’s Acura in the parking lot of the Silver Diner. They took the three-minute drive from their office building, rather than walk. “We’re not willing to risk our lives crossing Route 123,” Eisenberg said.

Classic.

“Drivers’ perceptions of the speed above the speed limit at which they believe they will receive a ticket (perceived-ticket speed) has a strongly significant impact on their assessment of safety risk.”

That’s from Fred Mannering, “An empirical analysis of driver perceptions of the relationships between speed limits and safety,” in Transportation Research Part F.

“So the faster you think you can go before getting a ticket, the more likely you are to think safety’s not compromised at higher speeds,” said Fred Mannering, a professor of civil engineering at Purdue University, in Science Daily.

Hanoi crazy night traffic from v!Nc3sl4s on Vimeo

I came across this entrancing video of night traffic in Hanoi, a city said to currently have the highest per-capita motorbike usage in the world. It’s hard not to watch this and be dazzled by the wonderfully organic, almost aquatic flow — no man steps into the same Hanoi traffic stream twice. “It somehow works,” you hear people say. Matt Steinglass reminds us it’s not often as pretty as it looks.

I was in Hanoi last December, on the eve of the country’s new compulsory helmet law (which according to one account seems to have brought a 30% reduction in injuries, though presumably we’ll need more time and better science to see how it shakes out), and seeing this video had me in a nostalgic mood.

So allow me to drag out the photo album for a moment, of snaps taken mostly from the back of moto-taxis:

Watching Hanoi traffic is hypnotizing, like sitting on a beach and watching waves break.

Photo by Tom Vanderbilt

There were many stylish riders, but helmets were not generally considered a vital accessory.

Photo by Tom Vanderbilt

There’s an interesting Q&A in New Scientist with hypermiler Jack Martin that hints at some of the reasons why, as studies have suggested, people who drive with fuel economy in mind are less likely to be involved in a crash.

How does the way you drive differ from how everyone else drives?

I have difficulty multitasking while driving. I can’t talk on the phone while driving. It’s about awareness and “hyperconsciousness”, which takes a lot of practice. You have to look far down the road and be aware of everything going on in front and around you. I first learned that while driving the bus. My eyes were constantly moving to the mirrors, the speed dial, the road, to anticipate conditions and stop in time.

That was well in line with what I’ve read before. But then I was struck by this odd detail:

“Most hypermilers also like to drive barefoot to feel the resistance on the accelerator. The connection between that resistance and the numbers on the scan gauge tells you what behaviours improve your mileage. By following my techniques, a friend improved her mpg by 70 per cent.”

Like those human specimens on the off-world colony in Wall-E, is there anything Southern Californians won’t do in their cars?

P.S. What if you happen to hear an ad on the radio while you’re pulling up to the ATM/voting machine? Doesn’t that violate rules?

Some interesting numbers out of an HOT on Highway 167 in Washington state.

People seemed willing to pay $1 to lower their commute by 10 minutes in heavy congestion.

The highest possible tolls is $9, and only a dozen paid that in heavy-traffic July.

HOT’s have been famously tagged “Lexus Lanes,” but some reports have been shown them being used by a broad variety of users across income, etc., lines. The most common vehicle found in these lanes were not Lexuses (Lexi?) but Fords (7,500 of ‘em). I wonder what percentage were pickup trucks, and I’m further interested in the gender breakdown of lane users.

That’s the subtitle of the book, just out in the Netherlands, published by the fine De Bezige Bij — the “busy bee.” For the other international editions check here.

Jans, a Dutch traffic engineer, got in touch to note the book had been mentioned in the newspaper De Pers a few days ago. He also noted the article contained news that a recent “morning peak hour was the tenth worst peak hour ever, measured in total length of traffic jams, with a total of 568 kilometers (over 350 miles).”

I’m going to have start assembling a league table of traffic jam standings…

China Daily reports on how primary school students in the county of Guizhou are required to “salute” the drivers of passing cars (I don’t think they’re talking about the one-fingered variety).

Story here or after the jump…

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Apparently, they don’t mince words in Australia. Story here.

Photo: Eric Dumbaugh

As was recently reported in the Washington Post, Montgomery County, Md., is planning an overhaul of its “road code,” the sort of thing that seems like a bureaucratic footnote but then goes on to have major implications in the built environment.

Among the major issues, the newspaper reported:

The panel recommended that roads in urban areas be designed for speed limits of 30 to 40 mph, saying anything slower would be unrealistic and difficult for police to enforce. The panel also said trees should be planted farther from curbs on roads with 40 mph speed limits because of the danger they pose to motorists who hit them.

What strikes me in discussions like these is the weird disconnect between design and driver behavior. One of the reasons it can so often be difficult to enforce lower speed limits is that these limits are posted on roads that are intensely over-engineered. The supposed “fix,” as suggested above, is to assume that drivers are going to drive at a certain speed, and so to then rearrange the entire landscape — removing trees, etc. — to allow them to do so “safely.”

Of course, on the road “designed” for speed limits of 30 to 40 mph, they will inevitably drive faster. But then, of course, if someone crashes and kills a pedestrian or another driver, it’s an “accident,” it’s down to driver behavior; if they smash into a tree, it’s deemed poor traffic safety engineering. As the work of Eric Dumbaugh has found, looking at streets like the one above, at Stetson University in Florida, often the worst safety performance comes on the roads that are deemed “safe” by traffic engineers, while the best can come on tree-lined streets like the one above (which had no crashes and speeds below 30 mph during the five years he looked at it).

We consistently get urban speeds wrong in the U.S. In Germany, the land where speed is supposedly worshipped, the speed-limit free sections of the autobahn are contrasted by a mandatory, heavily enforced 30 KPH (that’s 18 mph, folks) limit in residential areas.

Another classic specter the article invokes is emergency response times. Any time a group seeks to lower speeds on a road, there are dark projections made of people being killed in fires because firefighters will be held up on traffic calmed streets. Well, for one, have you ever seen these vehicles on the way to an incident? They often don’t actually drive that much faster than anyone else — particularly since cars frequently don’t get out of the way in time — but I wonder if the lights and sirens and the panic they induce may make us overestimate their sense of urgency. In any case, studies have suggested that emergency-response teams are as likely to be help up by random traffic delays and the like as anything else.

But the larger issue is risk. As Reason magazine has pointed out, the risk of dying in a fire in the U.S. is roughly the same as drowning: In one year, 1 in 88,000, and, over a lifetime, 1 in 1100. The risk of dying in a car crash, according to the article, is 1 out of 6500 in a year. The risks of being killed while crossing the street. The risk of being killed while being a pedestrian? “A one-year risk of one in 48,500 and a lifetime risk of one in 625.”

Designing roads to meet some supposed emergency response criteria, for that dramatic last-second rescue, actually helps raise the risk of dying in a much more common way: In traffic.

Greenwich Village, NYC, has just doubled its hourly meter rates for street parking in a trial, reports the NYT.

I’m not sure if they’re going for that Shoupian “85% occupancy” solution, but judging by some of the quotes, the price might need to get higher (or time limits need to be enforced).

“On Wednesday, shortly before noon, Sal Rincione sent one of his employees to feed the meter where his 2008 Acura sedan was parked on Seventh Avenue South.

“Even at $2 an hour, it’s still cheaper than putting your car in a garage,” he said.”

The U.K.’s “Think” campaign typically offers first-rate stuff (even when they borrow the concepts from others, as in the “gorillas” video), and this one’s no exception.

I can’t remember the last time I saw an ad in the U.S. talking about speed and pedestrian safety.

(via The Transportationist)

In Traffic I spend a fair amount of time talking about the “myth of multitasking,” and my basic riff on talking on a phone (doesn’t matter if it’s hands-free or not) and driving is that you’ll be doing one or the other — and perhaps both — less well. By how much depends on the driving and it depends on the conversation.

NPR took a novel approach to demonstrate the mechanics of distraction: Rather than looking at a driver, they asked a professional musician to play piano while being asked to do other things.

To wit:

“For over an hour, we tasked Frasch with playing a range of pieces, some he knew and some he had to sight-read. While he was playing, we asked him to multitask. Sometimes the additional work was simple. For instance, Frasch has no trouble talking about his childhood while playing a Bach minuet. But when the challenges took more brain power, it was tougher for Frasch to answer questions and play the piano at the same time.”

Is it just me or was he actually not even that smooth on this part?

It gets worse:

“So we took it up another notch. We gave Frasch a piece of music he’d never seen before, a fast-tempo number. While he was sight-reading, like a driver navigating an unfamiliar route through a big city, we asked him to do a math problem:

A multitasking driver might have hit something else. Just says the pianist, who was already working hard to follow the music, simply couldn’t handle something else that required real thinking.”

As one of the commenters notes, this guy is a professional, someone who’s practiced for countless hours. Imagine by contrast the “average” driver and the sheer range of novel events that can happen on the road.

(thanks to Peter Warnock)

From the Chicago Tribune:

“In markets selling fake seat belts in neighboring Rawalpindi, stores have sold out. These belts are threadbare, and their buckling mechanisms do not appear to be strong enough to withstand a stomach after a heavy meal, let alone a 5-m.p.h. car crash.

“These belts aren’t really made for cars,” acknowledged entrepreneur Waqas Ali, 23, who sells fake seat belts and other car parts. “They’re of no use. We just put them in because of the police.”

Here’s a pretty compelling argument for black box recorders and the like.

Like Jorg Haider, the driver here seems to have had a few. The black box “allegedly showed Butres was travelling at 113mph, with the throttle 70 per cent open, despite bad weather that had left the road covered in puddles.”

The driver is denying it; absent the technology, it might be harder to make the prosecution’s case (even with witnesses).

An interesting piece from the New York Times on the growing problem of handling older drivers who shouldn’t be behind the wheel. It’s quite striking how people, in the U.S. at least, take driving to be some kind of inalienable right — rather than possessing the ability to operate heavy machinery in a safe manner.

“How am I going to tell a guy who fought for this country and has two Purple Hearts that I am going to take away his license and take away his freedom?” one police chief asked at the conference.”

Story here or after the jump…
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Ford’s new “MyKey” program has been getting a lot of press. As Scientific American sums up:

“MyKey has a transponder chip that, once plugged into the ignition, allows car owners to program their car’s computer. This includes setting the car’s maximum speed limit as high as 80 miles per hour, and to issue warning chimes when the car’s speed reaches 45, 55 or 65 miles per hour. Although a driver can still do a lot of damage at 80 miles per hour, and it exceeds most speed limits, this speed does allow for more maneuverability during highway driving (particularly if a driver needs to pass the car ahead).”

All the press has noted that this is meant as a way for parents to have some influence over their son’s or daughter’s driving. Given the overinvolvement of teens in serious crashes, on balance I think it’s a worthwhile idea (even if an 80 MPH governor is quite beside the point on, say, a normal suburban road).

But I also wonder about the subtle message these sort of technologies and programs send. Indeed, whenever you hear about some program to monitor driver behavior or provide driver feedback, it always seems to be oriented towards teens. This makes sense on the level that learners need the most feedback and monitoring, and are at the highest risk on the road, but it also seems to suggest that the rest of us are quite fine to go at whatever speed we think is OK, and that there’s nothing really to address in that.

When you look at the numbers of speed-related crashes, the evidence suggests the problem is hardly limited to teens. As I’m currently in Canada, I’ll refer to some Canadian research (though there’s little reason to doubt it’s much different in the U.S.).

Looking at this report from Transport Canada, it’s quite clear that younger drivers pose the greatest risk in terms of speed — some one in three fatal crashes happened to drivers between 16-24 (that age range obviously extends beyond the teenage years).

But it hardly stops there. Overall, some eighty percent of speeding drivers in fatal crashes are under 45. And one of the most interesting trends identified was that speed-related crashes were actually growing faster among drivers over 45 years of age than those younger than 45, as the chart below notes.

Clearly, it’s more than a “teen driving” issue — and it raises the question of who’s minding the minders.