It’s not that people are unpredictable. They are predictable. But they frequently behave counterintuitively, a phenomenon that has given rise to the field of behavioral economics. Like economists, engineers have traditionally ignored psychology. Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), is a 300-odd page romp into what scientists are learning about how traffic really works now that they are accounting for the human element. Take “passive safety.” It’s long been the philosophy behind efforts to make driving safer. Reduce driver demands by simplifying the driving environment, and protect people from getting hurt in crashes—rather than teaching skillful driving. After all, it’s easier to engineer safety than change behavior. But too much safety lulls the driver into complacency.
Driving down Orlando’s US Highway 50 with author Tom Vanderbilt, Dan Burden, a traffic eminence, notes that trees have been eliminated, and the sidewalk pushed so far back from the street as to be in “another world,” all to relieve drivers of hazards and distractions. Nonetheless, this stretch is the 12th deadliest road in America.
Yet, nearby on 50, where lanes and clear zones are narrower, and dangerous “fixed objects”–poles and trees–remain, but where traffic is otherwise completely comparable, a fatality hasn’t occurred in five years. “The hazards [are] the safety device,” Vanderbilt writes. “Drivers left with little room for error seemed quite capable of not making errors.”
That concept extends to rotaries, which not only move traffic considerably more quickly than standard stoplight intersections, but are safer, even though–or rather because–drivers have to compensate for uncertainty by driving more carefully. This is the rationale behind the famous Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman’s counterintuitively safe blending of the worlds of pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists on narrow streets.
Oddly, Vanderbilt ignores this logic for highway speeds, an issue that has arisen as politicians use safety as an additional excuse to promote a new double nickel to address skyrocketing oil prices and climate change. Vanderbilt marshals considerable evidence to argue that slower is always safer, but he doesn’t dig into special cases.
Boosting the speed limit on Indiana interstates from 65-70 mph, which raised average speeds by more than 3 mph, did not lead to more injuries or deaths, according to a recent study. Investigator Fred Mannering of Purdue University largely credits reduced speed variance, and adds that greater alertness may also have played a role.
The take-the-human-out-of-the-equation approach combined with labor saving devices–slushboxes, radar cruise control, etc–leads yuppies to think they can multitask safely behind the wheel. Vanderbilt cites various studies to explain why they won’t get away with it. Attention capacity is limited, and easily breached. One of several examples: “pedestrians using mobile devices walked more slowly and were less able to interact with the device, pausing occasionally to “sample the environment”,” Vanderbilt writes. And stuff happens so quickly in traffic that more than two seconds’ inattention boosts the risk of collision 19-fold.
There’s much more. Vanderbilt dissects the frustrations of getting stuck in slow traffic. Anxiety, uncertainty, and boredom all slow time, as does the sense–oft illusory–that other lanes are moving quicker. He reports that driving is safest in the least corrupt countries. And he explains why adding more highways or lanes has diminishing returns, and why traffic increases to fill new capacity, through “latent demand.”
When a strike removed 9,000 trucks from the roads near Los Angeles, within a few days the traffic was as bad as ever. (Nonetheless, more than several years after completion of the Big Dig, it still takes me only 25-30 minutes–reliably–to drive to Boston’s Logan Airport, as compared to 45 minutes to an hour in the old days.)
There is no easy way to ease traffic, short of moving to the Great Plains or the Great Basin. But understanding its flows may make it slightly less intolerable.
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I’ve noticed a similar phenomena in Los Angeles. A freeway will be widened by as much as 3 additional lanes in one direction, and there is never any improvement in traffic flow.
There is however the idiot factor, which may or may not improve traffic. I would like to see a study on that.
I read this book a while ago and found the argument for lower speed limits specious when compared to all the other innovative thinking displayed elsewhere in the book. There are sections of rural highway, especially out here in the west where limits could be safely raised to 90 or 100 MPH with no impact on fatality.
Otherwise it is a very interesting read. I loved reading the data about injury and fatality throughout history. It seems that roads in the days of horses and buggies where far more dangerous places that we’d imagine them to be. It additionally uncovers data about how some vaunted “safety” regulation has had almost no measurable improvement. The one that comes to mind is the third brake light, which has reduced collisions by a mere single-digit percentage.
–chuck
This reminds me of an economist’s (I’ve forgotten who) take on auto safety that I once read. His theory was that all the safety equipment in cars acts to reduce the price of bad or aggressive driving. His prescription was to remove all the seat belts and air bags, then mount a dagger on the steering column of every car. With a dagger pointed at each driver’s heart, the cost of bad driving becomes staggering, and better driving is sure to result.
the third brake light, which has reduced collisions by a mere single-digit percentage.
Yes. What exactly do you expect? The low-hanging fruit, the giant big improvements in traffic safety were made in the late ’60s and ’70s: Effective seatbelts, side-impact guard beams, and so forth. The next wave of substantial improvements was smaller, the wave after that smaller still, and so on. It’s asymptotic progress. It’s worked the same way for the cleanup of auto emissions: the first wave of control regulations and strategies gave huge double-digit-percentage improvements over uncontrolled cars. The next wave gave smaller improvements over the first wave, and so on with each subsequent wave. Most of the improvements remaining to be made are small relative to the early huge improvements; the 4.3% enduring crash avoidance benefit of the center brake light is actually quite substantial when considered in context.
If less safety equipment meant safer driving, then the kid on the Gixxer with a t-shirt and flip-flops would be the safest driver on the road.
and why traffic increases to fill new capacity, through “latent demand.”
What does that mean – latent demand? To me it’s people who aren’t able to make the highest and best use of their skills.
Example: It’s 1998 and the Big Dig is years from being finished. You live in Woburn (14 miles north of Boston) and you get a great job offer with a company in Weymouth (17 miles south of Boston). You decide that you just can’t take the job because the commute would be just too bad.
Now, with the Big Dig finished, someone in Woburn gets a great offer in Weymouth they can take it. Although this does mean one more car is driving through the tunnel every day.
But, that “latent demand” isn’t a bad thing, it’s a sign that people are now better able to make use of their time and skills.
Effective seatbelts, side-impact guard beams, and so forth.
Electronic Stablity Control is expected to save as many lives and be as big a safety improvment as seat belts.
Bumper cars for everyone! Then we could all drive mindlessly about and even give the bad drivers a playful bump when they’re messing up. Oh, and the fuel milage… awesome!
This reminds me of an economist’s (I’ve forgotten who) take on auto safety that I once read. His theory was that all the safety equipment in cars acts to reduce the price of bad or aggressive driving. His prescription was to remove all the seat belts and air bags, then mount a dagger on the steering column of every car.
The author was David Friedman in the book Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life, and it was a thought experiment (involving a spike mounted on the windshield, inches from the driver’s head) to help laypeople understand how safety equipment makes people less safe.
He also facetiously suggested an additional benefit, wherein if you saw someone driving around with a full-face helmet on (to protect themselves from the spike) you’d know to steer clear of that particular driver.
The author was David Friedman in the book Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life, and it was a thought experiment (involving a spike mounted on the windshield, inches from the driver’s head) to help laypeople understand how safety equipment makes people less safe.
It sounds great, but he’s obviously wrong. The statistics prove it out; fatality rates are far lower now than they used to be, and that is due largely to passive safety equipment and improved highway design. The facts don’t support his position at all.
A freeway will be widened by as much as 3 additional lanes in one direction, and there is never any improvement in traffic flow.
Traffic is like a gas. It expands to fill the space (the roadway), and in time, will contract if the space is removed.
It has happened on more than one occasion, in cases when roadways have been removed, such as during major urban planning projects. The nightmare scenarios don’t play out — the traffic just disappears.
We should recognize that the supply for highways creates a feedback loop that stimulates demand. When the supply is removed, the resulting higher cost of driving caused by the reduction in space (inconvenience, need for alternative routes, etc.) prompts us to either find alternatives or, in many cases, just not make the drive at all. The driving wasn’t all that important in the first place, but people did it because they could do it easily. When it isn’t so easy anymore, they find other things to do.
But too much safety lulls the driver into complacency.
I don’t think that’s it. I think the problem is that 98% of driving is a complete bore. I can’t blame people for getting distracted – who wouldn’t seek some form of distraction?
I agree with the notion that less hazards mean more complacency. It’s true on freeways and it’s true on African plains when gazelles get a little casual around Larry the lion.In both cases,there is a strong possibility of an unhappy ending.
http://www.mystarcollectorcar.com/
While some psychological considerations may help us to marginally lower our road fatalities, it is the much derided active and passive safety systems that have delivered lower and lower road fatalities per mile driven year after year. Even in total numbers, last year saw as many fatalities as in 1982 with many more cars on the road.
I have my doubts that making the roads “challenging” would make traffic any safer. That only works for small stretches which contract with other batter less challenging roads that are easier to drive on. Once people get used to these “challenging” roads they will drive just as badly as on good ones.
I say technology for the win – I like a spirited drive on a good road as much as the next person but if my car had the ability to safely drive itself to work while I read the paper or have a snooze then I’d be all for it.
There are a few stretches of road where I live where people drive prety fast – 10 to 40 km/h above the posted speed limit. They’re all fairly level, straight roads. The city has tried different approaches to reduce speeding (one in each location):
1. Reduce the speed limit by 20 km/h.
2. Make the lanes narrower.
3. Put really big, reflective signs near obstacles (trees, telephone poles) so people can avoid them.
4. Nothing.
Item 1 didn’t help – it just means that people pulled over for speeding get a higher value ticket (average speed is the same).
Item 3 didn’t help – the number of accidents is the same, but repairs are now more costly.
Item 4 did nothing (as expected).
Item 2 worked wonderfully. Fewer accidents & a lower average speed.
Wide, straight roads encourage faster driving. Narrow roads discourage you from going faster. You can engineer roads to encourage a particular speed, but then you can’t collect many speeding tickets.
I drove a lot more carefully under icy conditions when I had my old Toyota Corolla without ABS, and I drive similarly carefully–damn carefully–in my Accord without ABS than I did in the days I had my first gen Saturn WITH ABS. During the time I had the ABS, it saved my derriere twice, enabling me to steer in order to avoid hitting something after hitting the brakes on a slick, icy surface did virtually nothing towards stopping me. I was never in that situation in the eight years with the Toyota or the five winters I’ve had the Honda.
There are a number of studies that provide strong evidence that others behave the way I do with respect to ABS.
@jmo: actually, what you said is a perfect illustration of latent demand. When the traffic was bad, you refrained from taking a job which would have caused you to commute. Thus, you had a “demand” to drive, but you are refraining from driving because the traffic is bad. When the highway was expanded, traffic got better, and you decided that the commute was fine. So you stopped abstaining and started driving. I have no idea what the traffic capacity of the big dig is, but if enough people think like you do (and why wouldn’t they, you are just being rational) it would lead to the traffic capacity being filled again, since lots of people who were putting off commuting due to bad traffic want to use that new capacity. Thus, the driver situation is set back to where it was before capacity was added.
Latent demand is similar to the mystery of why the other lane in heavy traffic seems to move faster. Because less people are in the other lane, and fewer cars are using the same volume of space as the other lanes, it moves faster. This causes people to merge into that lane, which slows it down to the point that the volume is the same (or even heavier) then the other lane. Therefore, you are better off not trying to merge into that lane, since in the long run the lane you are moving in will move faster, and not the lane next to you that is moving faster right now.
“Traffic” is a interesting read. If you clicked on the review link and liked what you read, the book is worth your while. Other issues Vanderbilt tackles are why traffic should be more like internet forums (really), and when construction reduces lanes on a highway, is it better to merge immediately, or drive to the end, and then merge? For the latter, apparently the driving to the end option is better; it uses the available roadway more efficiently.
@pch101
The author was David Friedman in the book Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life, and it was a thought experiment (involving a spike mounted on the windshield, inches from the driver’s head) to help laypeople understand how safety equipment makes people less safe.
It sounds great, but he’s obviously wrong. The statistics prove it out; fatality rates are far lower now than they used to be, and that is due largely to passive safety equipment and improved highway design. The facts don’t support his position at all.
The author is not “obviously wrong”. We were not talking about fatality rates. The topic is how safely or how unsafely people drive. Safety equipment (or the lack of it) certainly impacts what happens WHEN there is an accident. However, the question here is whether safety equipment affects the level of risk that a driver chooses to take, thereby making an accident either more or less likely. Show me some empirical evidence that this theory has been tested and disproved, and I will recant my position. However until that point, I am good with the economic rule that when some kind of behavior is less expensive, people (in the aggregate) will engage in more of that behavior and vise versa.
And for the record, I would rather be in a car with passive restraints than without if for no other reason than that most other drivers have them too. If i choose to drive a 1950s car with no seat belts, I can be damned careful, but I cannot control the actions of the dude with air bags who tries to text and drink his slurpee while driving and doesn’t notice the traffic light I am going through.
In Friedmans world there would be a lot of dead Americans. Averaged they are the most pathetic and incompetent drivers, mainly because they will give a drivers license to any retard that can fog a mirror.
This is also why they favor PASSIVE over active safety, they couldn’t use the latter.
We were not talking about fatality rates.
There’s no better measure of safety than fatality rates. It’s a concrete method for determining how driving kills people.
Safety equipment (or the lack of it) certainly impacts what happens WHEN there is an accident.
The data also tells us that collision rates are also falling. This is readily available from NHTSA and the like. So no, you are incorrect.
Show me some empirical evidence that this theory has been tested and disproved, and I will recant my position.
The data is readily available, and I’ve posted on this topic ad nauseum in the past, with plenty of cites.
For one, fatality rates have fallen by 80% in the last fifty years, even though the art of driving has not improved at all. Passive safety in the car and in roadway design explains it; we crash less and the crashes are less harmful when they do occur, because of the safety gear. The facts are hiding in plain sight for anyone who is interested.
“passive safety.” It’s long been the philosophy behind efforts to make driving safer. Reduce driver demands by simplifying the driving environment, and protect people from getting hurt in crashes—rather than teaching skillful driving. After all, it’s easier to engineer safety than change behavior.
This is a very good point and reinforced by Hippo above. Any idiot that can walk into a DMV can get a license to operate a 2 ton car. I’m not sure if they actually have to even show any skill on the drivers test anymore. OK, yeah, quite of few of us took drivers ed in High School taught by the football coach. That was worthless. I’ve taken professional track and driving courses as an adult. It’s expanded my skills and highlighted the overall lack thereof for the majority of drivers on the road today.
What’s so bad about increasing the skill requirements for any potential driver hoping to get licensed?
it would lead to the traffic capacity being filled again
Yes, but when it is, it means there are many more people working in jobs that better fit their needs. More volume means more people are able to be where they need to be to making the highest and best use of their time and skills.
I’ve taken professional track and driving courses as an adult. It’s expanded my skills and highlighted the overall lack thereof for the majority of drivers on the road today.
But, you’re wrong.
Pch101 has been kind enough to post ad nauseum the studies that clearly show courses like yours encourage people to drive more aggressively and as a result confer no safety benefit.
It only stands to reason. Send a 17yo kid to Skip Barber and do you think he is going to drive more or less agressivley on the way home?
I warn all of you. This is a DIRE warning.
Further discussion of safety will invoke the wrath of the Volvo Gods.
Posters at Brickboard.com and men named Sven are ready to ‘decontent’ our roadways if the word safety is uttered again.
I mean it! If you say the word ’safety’ one more time you will be stoned to death.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYkbqzWVHZI
So to extend the argument… Is a person who has great auto insurance liable to be less risk adverse on the road? Good health insurance translates to less trips to the gym?
All large cities all over the world seem to have big problems with traffic jams regardless of the incentives or extra taxes the governments impose. IMHO the root problem is overpopulation and a general lack of intelligence. Agent Smith in The Matrix said that people are like viruses – they conglomerate, pollute, use up natural resources, and when they destroy their area, they move to another one. That is certainly true for people living without intelligence. Look at how we designed our lives and our cities. It just doesn’t make sense. The traffic jams are just one manifestation of the madness. There must be a better way than commuting to work for who-knows-how-long, slaving away for eight hours, driving back home for one, two hours, getting home late in the evening and having just a couple of hours of free time.
Then on a weekend creating more traffic jams going to cottages to be away from the crowded cities, just to be in cities formed by cottages; creating more car-based pollution just to be away from the pollution of the cities. More intelligence and fewer people are needed.
Wow. A post about driving and not one post about how Europeans are so much better drivers than Americans. (I’ve been to Europe and they’re not.) Kudos!
There must be a better way than commuting to work for who-knows-how-long, slaving away for eight hours, driving back home for one, two hours, getting home late in the evening and having just a couple of hours of free time.
Um, that’s why people live in the city so they don’t have to drive everywhere.
I think you’re referring to the suburbs.
What’s so bad about increasing the skill requirements for any potential driver hoping to get licensed?
What’s so bad about it is that it does little or nothing to improve safety. Crashes are not happening because people lack “professional track and driving” skills.
Accidents happen because people drive drunk, because they don’t have enough common sense to slow down in bad weather conditions, because they are texting, because they are tailgating, and so on.
Just today I was thinking how slow the 35mph speed limit felt on a wide, flat, almost empty stretch of street in Farmers Branch, TX. If I wasn’t concerned about getting a ticket, I would have driven about 50mph on that road vs. 45mph while looking out for cop shaped big American sedans. If the street had some objects to make it appear narrower and less safe without actually being less safe, I’d probably slow down. Maybe they could decorate the median with an occasional topiary crown vic.
The average driver may not benefit much from a high-performance driving course, but he will benefit from a course that teaches car control in emergency situations, eg. skidpad. This aspect is definitely missing from North American drivers ed courses as we tend to rely solely on passive safety.
Safety aside, improved driver education combined with (actively used) common sense can help reduce everyone’s frustration. If everyone observed proper lane discipline, there would be much less road rage, lane-to-lane weaving, etc. Using turn signals, using the “zipper” approach when merging with another lane – all these things could make driving less stressful if only they were hammered into our minds from the beginning.
If you want to know whether safety equipment effects peoples driving, just watch someone in a pickup and someone in a Miata. I’ve never seen anyone in a Miata drive like some of the aholes I’ve seen in pickups and SUV’s (and some of those aholes are my friends and also have Miatas, so it’s not all about the type of driver the vehicle attracts, it’s just self preservation).
+1 pch101, jmo, and Dynamic88. Steven, point noted!
David, US Route 50 goes nowhere near Florida. It crosses the country from Ocean City, MD to Sacramento, CA. It’s a great ride — I’ve been on much of it!
@Chuck
For a (fairly) mature technology, 1% can make a lot of difference, especially if so little cost is involved. I don’t think you can trivialize it just because we’re not talking about a 10-20% improvement.
210delray,
On page 205, vanderbilt refers to “US Highway 50.” My googling in light of your comment suggests he meant State Highway 50, which goes through Orlando.
I’m sure I’ve at least crossed US 50 near O.C. and near Sac’to. Don’t know about points in between. I like that 90, which begins near my house in suburban Boston, ends at the Lake Washington Floating Bridge, which goes into Seattle, near where i lived as a small child.
Interesting alternative review to the one by Stephan Wilkinson, posted just about a year ago here:
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/book-review-traffic-why-we-drive-the-way-we-do-and-what-it-says-about-us/
That goes to whether one perceives other drivers as friendlies to work with or foes. It has some validity because ones driving changes from place to place depending on perceptions.
Bottom line is self preservation is a strong force.
Best example is this. Most often I ride a motorcycle and often people turn into you. When called upon it they invariably say they didn’t see you.
They are lying sacks of shit.
How do I know this?
Where I live is a open carry state.
While carrying open, same roads, same motorcycle, same everything, they never turn into you and are extremely courteous.
They don’t see the motorcycle (because it is of no risk to them), but they sure as hell see the weapon that is many times smaller then the motorcycle.
LOL, yeah, lying sacks of shit.
I noticed that when driving in residential streets a summer ago in Germany that they don’t implement stop signs. At each intersection you yield to the traffic coming from your right. I don’t think I’ve ever paid so much attention at intersections before in my life.
Hippo,
That is an extremely interesting observation.
” … 4.3% enduring crash avoidance benefit of the center brake light is actually quite substantial when considered in context.”
A 4.3% crash reduction rate from something as simple and cheap as an extra brake light is a bargain. If true, that means avoiding one in twenty three accidents for very little money.
The ideas that Davejay and jpcavanaugh are describing from my Hidden Order are not mine, they are my descriptions of the work of two other economists.
Steve Peltzman made the point that lowering the cost to the driver of being in an accident results in drivers (rationally) taking fewer precautions to avoid accidents. He supported it with a statistical analysis of the effect of the introduction of a bundle of safety requirements. His conclusion was that making cars safer had increased the accident rate by about the same proportion by which it decreased fatalities per accident, leaving the fatality rate about the same.
The dagger in the steering column (not the windshield) is due to Gordon Tullock, making Peltzman’s point in a more dramatic form, although, unlike Peltzman, without data.
Where DaveJay’s full face helmet idea comes from I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure it’s not from anything I wrote.
Pch101 overestimates how easy it is to prove things with statistics. Fatality rates may have fallen, but that’s over a period in which a lot of other things have changed; figuring out why they fell requires actually analyzing the data, not just observing it.
For one thing, medical care has improved, which reduces fatality rates even if nothing else changes. Improvements in automobile engineering reduce accidents by making cars easier to control. As best I recall, Peltzman found a downward trend in fatalities over time, and I think accident rates as well, even with no change in automobile safety requirements.
Peltzman’s argument doesn’t imply that making accidents less deadly won’t reduce the death rate. What it implies is that, if nothing else changes, it will increase the accident rate. Whether the increase in the accident rate is more or less than the decrease in fatalities per accident is an empirical question–it could go either way.
Peltzman’s argument doesn’t imply that making accidents less deadly won’t reduce the death rate. What it implies is that, if nothing else changes, it will increase the accident rate.
What percentage of people who buy a car with Brake Assist technology (as an example) know their car is so equipped?
Whether the increase in the accident rate is more or less than the decrease in fatalities per accident is an empirical question–it could go either way.
So, you’re saying that Electronic Stability Control will reduce fatalities by 34% (in light trucks and vans) but that will result in people driving so recklessly that more people end up dying overall?
That doesn’t make any sense at all.
A spike on the steering wheel isn’t reasonable, but how about requiring that insurance be for liability only? The potential for a huge repair bill may encourage people to consider the true cost of unsafe driving practices.
Hippo
Are you saying you sometimes ride your bike with a rifle strapped to your back?
jmo:
Pch101 has been kind enough to post ad nauseum the studies that clearly show courses like yours encourage people to drive more aggressively and as a result confer no safety benefit.
There’s a definite correlation between driver experience and accident rates (until drivers become elderly). But you (and Pch101) conclude that all driver skill training is an absolute waste.
Is there no room for improvement for basic driver education and training? For crying out loud, current so called “Driver’s Ed” courses have degenerated into fake bloody movies and MADD propaganda. Most never teach proper merging techniques.
It only stands to reason. Send a 17yo kid to Skip Barber and do you think he is going to drive more or less agressivley on the way home?
It only stands to reason for some. Yes, for most 17 year old males, you are correct. Less aggressive females, who are generally better students at that age – and who aren’t out to prove anything, would benefit.
Micheal Blue>
I think generally most people do what they think is in their OWN best interests. How are people “less intelligent” for commuting &/or creating traffic?
If you have a better way for me to get my 35 miles (ea way) to work (commuting going towards Chicago from near the WI state border) than working a 6am to 3pm schedule, I’d love to hear it. I think a lot of people are in the same boat — constricted by OTHER desires that have more priority thank figuring out how to not create traffic. If I didn’t drive, my commute (assuming I didn’t miss a bus or train) would be a consistent 75-90 minutes each way.
Going to work driving takes 45 min tops (leaving the house between 5 & 5:15am). Coming home takes 55-90 minutes.
IIRC, the bus doesn’t run early enough to get me to the train to me to get to work on time. Once I’m at the train, it’s 45 minutes to get to work. Living next to the train/tracks would have me living in a pretty bad area. Driving my car to park @ the train, and then pay daily parking + train fare costs more than the gas on my bike & takes longer. I also open up my car to vandalism/theft/break-ins in that area leaving it in the same spot for 10 hours. Actually living next to work would make my monthly housing payment almost triple for 2 less bedrooms, 1 less bathroom, 1/3 the sq footage and I wouldn’t have a 2 car garage. Which married person would make that decision?
Sorry, but I’ll continue to create “traffic” no matter if you think it is unintelligent or not.
IMHO the people who pay outrageous fees to live in “downtown” are the foolish ones. How much is gaining that extra 1.5 hours a day (figure 15 min walk to work and back) actually costing you when you pay more for EVERYTHING?
Is there no room for improvement for basic driver education and training?
It depends on what type of “improvement” you want, and what you think that “improvement” will accomplish.
If you are just saying that basic driver’s Ed leaves much to be desired when it comes to car handling- in the Bob Bondurant sense of car handling- then I think almost everyone here will agree.
What we don’t seem to agree on is the idea that Bondurant high performance driving skills will translate into greater safety.
Pch101 has in the past posted ample evidence that such training simply makes people overconfident, and therefore more likely to drive faster and more aggressively, and have more accidents.
Aside from that, there is the fact that very few accidents happen because someone didn’t have skidpad training.
If you’re going to stop at the bar and have 3 beers on the way home from work, that negates your skidpad training. If you’re going to ride my bumper at 70, you’ve negated your skidpad training, and mine. If you’re going to text while driving, your ability to control a car on loose gravel may not be relevant as you crash head first into the semi.
In short, more demanding driver training increases the cost/time of getting a license, and does very little to improve safety.
Most of auto safety isn’t about actively doing something, rather it’s about refraining from doing things – driving drunk, following too close, driving too fast for road conditions, and so on. If we could teach people restraint that would be of far greater value than skidpad training.
This is difficult for piston heads to wrap their minds around, because we tend to value driving skill. Having Jack Baruth’s high speed driving skills is nice in a pinch, but having the good sense not to drive at tripple digit speeds in the first place is of far greater importance.
I know I’m beating a dead horse here, but one more example. I cycle to and from work as often as possible. My safety as a cyclist has mostly to do with following trafic rules, being predictable, and being highly visible. My bike handling skills are all but irrelevant. There are many teenagers who can do all sorts of BMX tricks that I can’t do. There are many mountain bikers with vastly superior bike handling skills. Yet none of this really translates to safer cycling on city streets. My ability (or lack thereof) to make a jump and do a front tire landing will never translate into safer riding on the city streets. It’s not about skill, it’s about sense.
I came late to the dance. I make my living driving all around metro Boston. The Big Dig was a nightmare. And about the only improvment in the whole deal is the I 90 East extension to Logan. That is the bee’s knees. The O’Neil Tunnel heading south after 3pm is a crap shoot. If the Mass Ave on ramp is stalled, its normal condition,it will back up the whole tunnel in short order with Congress St.and A st to Old Colony ,a viable alternative. just like during the Dig. I’ve spent plenty of time stalled on the Zakim bridge to marvel at its construction.
My old 528e has great ABS, steel beams in the doors, well engineered crumple zones. Standard 3 point belts. No air bags. I have been hooked up with fellow E28ers since 2k. All kinds of horrible accident pics involving E 28s. Very few fatals, and most of those involved ejection from not wearing a belt. The front and rear crumple zones work quite well. All I have to do is avoid geting T-Boned and I am reasonably assured of walking away. So I pay attention at intersections. I dont care if I have the light or the right of way. Its Boston, such stuff is just a suggestion. I dont go, if I cant see. That is where all the close calls come from.
Robstar, I think you misunderstood my point. My point was/is that it’s the general lack of intelligence that created a setup like this – that many people have no choice but to participate in creating the traffic jams. There must be a better way of organizing our society, our living and working places, than what we have now. How do you organize NY, LA, or GTA to be better flowing, to get rid of the traffic jams and much of the air pollution? It seems that with the huge number of people that share such a relatively small area you can’t – hence the overpopulation.
Also, some people have no choice but to drive to work, yet there are many lazy people that could easily take the train or subway…
@Michael Blue>
I did miss the point and I apologize.
I lived all of my life (except for about 1 year) INSIDE Chicago, commuting, by train/bus or car.
Going 7 miles to work by bus/train/walking combination took me the same amount of time or more than my 35-mile driving commute now.
My best commute time going that 7 miles, in a year, trying multiple different train/bus routes was 42 minutes. 42 minutes for 7 miles!!! On a bad day (the day I tried 3 bus routes) it took me over 2 hours.
Until much better & more (time) efficient public transportation arrives, I think people will continue to drive.
IMHO bus & train fares right now are way under priced. They should be at LEAST doubled (esp since every senior in chicago now rides free). Give a discount to the students/disabled & double or triple fares for everyone else.
Right now in Chicago you can go from howard to 95th street for $2.25 — on end of the city to the other. WAY too cheap.
Having been the driving instructor for two young people in the past several years I can say that without a doubt California’s driver exam is a joke.
The over the road test doesn’t even include getting on and off a freeway!
But, the biggest thing which would improve driver behavior would be much more agressive enforcement of traffic laws. There seem to be three major causes of wrecks: Substance abuse, driver inattention and driver aggression.
More ticketing of violations, particularly of bad intersection behaviors, would help.
The crackdowns on drunk driving over the past few decades have in fact reduced the rate of drunk driving related wrecks.
It should be much harder to get a license and harder to keep one than it is today.