Book Review: Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do

I just finished the book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What it Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt. It was excellent!

He takes a look at the psychology of driving, and has lots of data and studies to look at. One of the most fascinating parts to me was about the "less is more" theory, e.g. it's safer to have FEWER traffic signals, signs, high sidewalk curbs, etc, because those things allow a driver (as well as pedestrians and bicyclists) to feel safe when we shouldn't. He quotes recently-deceased Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman, who pioneered this theory. You can read more about Monderman on Vanderbilt's blog, or watch this video.

Two paragraphs really stood out for me. The first is about people's inability to understand the odds of dangerous things happening, and how it makes us try to add security to the wrong places. He articulates something very well that I've long thought (emphasis mine):

Grimly tally the number of people who have been killed by terrorism in the United States since the State Department began keeping records in the 1960s, and you'll get a total loss of less than 5,000--roughly the same number, it has been pointed out, as those who have been struck by lightening. But each year, with some fluctuation, the number of people killed in car crashes in the United States tops 40,000. More people are killed on the roads each month than were killed in the September 11 attacks. In the wake of those attacks, polls found that many citizens thought it was acceptable to curtail civil liberties to help counter the threat of terrorism . . . Those same citizens, meanwhile, in polls and in personal behavior, have routinely resisted traffic measures designed to reduce the annual death toll (e.g. lowering speed limits, introducing more red-light cameras, stiffer blood alcohol limits, stricter cell phone laws.) . . . It might be precisely because of all the vigilance that no further deaths due to terrorism have occured in the United States since 9/11 . . . This raises the question of why we do not mount a similarly concerted effort to improve the "security" of the nation's roads; instead in the wake of 9/11, newspapers have been filled with stories of traffic police being taken off the roads and assigned to counterterrorism.

And I liked this paragraph too (again, emphasis mine):

On the road, we make our judgments about what's risky and what's safe using our own imperfect human calculus. We think large trucks are dangerous, but we drive unsafely around them. We think roundabouts are more dangerous than intersections, although they're more safe. We think the sidewalk is a safer place to ride a bike, even though it's not. . . We do not let children walk to school even though driving presents a greater hazard . . . We buy SUVs because we think they're safer and then drive them in more dangerous ways. We drive at a minuscule following distance to the car ahead, exceeding out ability to avoid a crash, with a blind faith that the driver ahead will never have a reason to suddenly stop. We have gotten to the point where cars are safer than ever, yet traffic fatalities cling to stubbornly high levels. We know all this, and act as if we don't.

Anyway, the whole thing is a great read and I highly recommend it.