Traffic

by Tom Vanderbilt

  “They slow everyone down”: This recalls a comment from T. C. Willet’s Criminal on the Road: A Study of Serious Motoring Offences and Those Who Commit Them (London: Tavistock Publications, 1964). As Willet noted: “Some years ago a contest was arranged between two cars to be driven across a city area. One driver had to observe all signs, traffic lights, and speed regulations. The other was allowed to ignore all three if he could do so without endangering the lives of other road users. The law-breaking motorist arrived at this destination just—and only just—ahead of his law-abiding antagonist” (p. 129).

  “without a hitch”: The eBay quote comes from Theresa Howard, “Ads Pump up eBay Community with Good Feelings,” USA Today, October 17, 2004.

  more in revenue: Paul Resnick, Richard Zeckhauser, John Swanson, and Kate Lockwood, “The Value of Reputation on eBay: A Controlled Experiment.” John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; Working Paper No. RWP03-007.

  (provided it’s authentic): See, for example, John Morgan and Jennifer Brown, “Reputation in Online Auctions: The Market for Trust,” California Management Review, Fall 2006. About 98 percent of feedback on eBay is positive, which has led economist Axel Ockenfels of the University of Cologne in Germany to suspect that people may be afraid of negative retaliatory feedback. Ockenfels has worked with eBay to introduce mechanisms that allow users to post honest, negative feedback with less fear of reprisal. See Christoph Uhlhaas, “Is Greed Good?” Scientific American Mind, August–September 2007, p. 67.

  “rising insurance premiums”: Lior J. Strahilevitz, “How’s My Driving? For Everyone (and Everything?),” Public Law and Legal Theory Working Paper No. 125, Law School, University of Chicago. Accessed from http://ssrn.com/abstract_id=899144.

  have been tried: The Web site uncivilservants.org, for example, posts pictures of New York City cars with various official parking permits that are nonetheless parked illegally (many cars also have bootleg parking permits).

  actual driving record: C. E. Preston and S. Harris, “Psychology of Drivers in Traffic Accidents,” Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 49 (1965), pp. 284–88.

  they were “better”: For a good summary of these studies, see D. Walton and J. Bathurst, “An Exploration of the Perceptions of the Average Driver’s Speed Compared with Perceived Driver Safety and Driving Skill,” Accident Analysis & Prevention, vol. 30 (1998), 821–30.

  most dangerous thing: John Groeger, a psychologist at the University of Surrey in England, points out that this behavior may be a way to “protect ourselves from the anxieties involved in constantly placing ourselves at risk by developing confidence in our ability which we are rarely likely to be forced to realize is misplaced.” See Groeger, Understanding Driving (East Sussex: Psychology Press, 2001), p. 163.

  smallest returns: Brad M. Barber and Terrance Odean, “Trading Is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors,” Journal of Finance, vol. 55, no. 2 (2000).

  car accident: Julie M. Kos and Valerie A. Clarke, “Is Optimistic Bias Influenced by Control or Delay?” Health Education Research: Theory and Practice, vol. 16, no. 5 (2001), pp 533–40.

  have done it: The texting while driving poll comes from Reuters, August 7, 2007. Retrieved from http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0640649920070807.

  underestimate our own risk: For an interesting discussion of this phenomenon in the context of seat-belt usage, see “Unconscious Motivators and Situational Safety Belt Use,” Traffic Safety Facts: Traffic Tech, No. 315 (Washington, D.C.: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 2007).

  social mores and traffic laws: For a seminal discussion of these problems, see H. Laurence Ross, “Traffic Law Violation: A Folk Crime,” Social Problems, vol. 8, no. 3 (1960–61) pp. 231–41.

  in question are ambiguous: See R. B. Felson, “Ambiguity and Bias in the Self-Concept,” Social Psychology Quarterly, vol. 44 (March 1981), pp. 64–69.

  “unskilled and unaware of it”: Justin Kruger and David Dunning, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments,” Journal of Personality and Social Pscyhology, vol. 77, no. 6, (1999), pp. 1121–34.

  “better” (i.e., safer) drivers: E. Kunkel, “On the Relationship Between Estimate of Ability and Driver Qualification,” Psychologie und Praxis, vol. 15 (1971), pp. 73–80.

  (particularly men): See Frank P. McKenna, Robert A. Stanier, and Clive Lewis, “Factors Underlying Illusory Self-Assessment of Driving Skill in Males and Females,” Accident Analysis & Prevention, vol. 23, no. 1 (1991), pp. 45–52.

  outnumbered the courteous: New Jersey Star-Ledger, September 28, 1998.

  by low self-esteem: Mayer Perry writes, for example, that “if an individual lacks ‘personal drive’ or dominance, either is easily afforded in the driving situation, and in compensating for this lack, he frequently over-compensates.” Perry, Aggression on the Road (London: Tavistock, 1968), p. 7.

  promotes aggressive driving: George E. Schreer, “Narcissism and Aggression: Is Inflated Self-Esteem Related to Aggressive Driving?” North American Journal of Psychology, vol. 4, no. 3 (2002), pp. 333–42.

  claim to have had: See Gina Kolata, “The Median, the Math, and the Sex,” New York Times, August 19, 2007.

  than doing it: See “Aggravating Circumstances,” a report produced by Public Agenda (available at http://www.publicagenda.com). It could be, of course, that the people in the sample (maybe the kind of people who answer surveys) just happened to be an extraordinarily well-behaved group of drivers who really were subject to an inordinate number of louts (the sort who do not answer surveys). There could also be recall bias at work; it is far easier to remember the isolated aggressive acts of others than the uneventful stream of well-behaved driving. This in itself, however, would not explain why people’s perceptions would have changed over time.

  “view of the self”: J. M. Twenge, S. Konrath, J. D. Foster, W. K. Campbell, and B. J. Bushman, Egos Inflating over Time: A Test of Two Generational Theories of Narcissism, 2006. Cited in “Primary Sources,” Atlantic, July–August 2007.

  attributes to police officers: Still, getting a ticket may be a form of at least temporarily effective feedback: One study, looking at ten million Ontario drivers for more than a decade, found that each conviction for a traffic offense led to a 35 percent decrease in relative risk of death over the next month for that driver and others. See Donald A. Redelmeier, Robert J. Tibsharani, and Leonard Evans, “Traffic-Law Enforcement and Risk of Death from Motor-Vehicle Crashes: Case-Crossover Study,” Lancet, vol. 361, no. 9376 (2003), pp. 2177–82.

  “experience is a mixed blessing”: James Reason, Human Error (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 86.

  environment for workers: Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2006). Available at http://www.bls.gov. See also P. Lynn and C. R. Lockwood, The Accident Liability of Company Car Drivers, TRL Report 317 (Crowthorne: Transport Research Laboratory, 1998). This study found that company car drivers were 49 percent more likely to be involved in a crash, even after accounting for higher mileage and other factors.

  at the bottom: Heinrich’s safety philosophies have proved controversial over the years, but the idea that near misses are scaleable to more serious incidents remains powerful, particularly in traffic, where “human factors,” it is commonly believed, are responsible for up to 90 percent of all crashes. Indeed, a large-scale study of “naturalistic driving behavior” in 2006, which for the first time was able to reliably estimate the near-miss incidents, reported the following distribution after a year’s worth of study: 69 crashes, 761 near crashes, and 8,295 “incidents.” This means, roughly, that for every 120 incidents, there were 11 minor-injury crashes and 1 serious crash—a more robust frequency than that proposed by Heinrich. See, for example, the work of Fred Manuele, such as On the Practice of Safety (New York: Wiley Interscience, 2003).

  Investigators learned: Associated
Press, May 5, 2007.

  killed a motorcyclist: Information on the Janklow case comes from the Argus Leader, August 31, 2003.

  “more unintentional than others”: See Teresa L. Kramer, Brenda M. Booth, Han Xiaotong, and Keith D. Williams, “Some Crashes Are More Unintentional Than Others: A Reply to Blanchard, Hicking, and Kuhn,” Journal of Traumatic Stress, vol. 16, no. 5 (October 2003), pp. 529–30.

  “hindsight bias”: For a seminal account, see Baruch Fischoff, “Hindsight Is Not Equal to Foresight: The Effect of Outcome Knowledge on Judgment Under Uncertainty,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, vol. 1, no. 2 (1975), pp. 288–99.

  intentional or not: In 1958, this number was said to be 88 out of 100. This figure, taken from a National Safety Council study, comes from H. Laurence Ross, “Traffic Law Violation: A Folk Crime,” Social Problems, vol. 8, no. 3 (1960–61), pp. 231–41.

  “then it’s an accident”: Shamus Toumey, “Ryan Crash Kills Man Who Had Just Arrived from Mexico,” Chicago Sun-Times, October 6, 2006.

  over the limit and kills someone: In an excellent survey of the legal penalties for drivers who kill “vulnerable road users” (pedestrians and cyclists), Jake Voelcker notes that juries have long been unwilling to levy the most serious charges of manslaughter against even negligent drivers because, as drivers themselves, they expressed a feeling of “there, but for the grace of God, go I.” He cites, as well, examples of subtle bias among judges who imply that accidents are themselves unavoidable—for example, the “accident happened because the appellant was driving rather too fast, as young men will.” The “genuine accident” involving a sober driver, he notes, tends to be avoided by legislation. “Is this simply an unfortunate fact of modern life for which no one is to blame?” he asks. “Or is the driver responsible for the very presence of his car?” Voelcker points to a number of other unresolved legal issues. What should the appropriate penalty be for dangerous driving that narrowly misses killing someone? Why are convicted criminals given harsher sentences for driving-related offenses than others, even when the standard of driving involved in the offense is the same? Should drivers be held to a certain level of causality simply by choosing to operate a machine that is known to be dangerous, thus imposing potential risk on others? See Jake Voelcker, “A Critical Review of the Legal Penalties for Drivers Who Kill Cyclists or Pedestrians,” April 2007. Retrieved from www.jake-v.co.uk/cycling.

  majority were men: Phillip C. Shin, David Hallett, Mary L. Chipman, Charles Tator, and John T. Granton, “Unsafe Driving in North American Automobile Commercials,” Journal of Public Health, vol. 27, no. 4 (December 2005), pp. 318–25.

  themselves as “unlucky”): See Richard Wiseman, The Luck Factor (New York: Miramax Books, 2003).

  back in time they happened: See, for example, J. Maycock, C. Lockwood, and J. F. Lester, The Accident Liability of Car Drivers, Research Report No. 315 (Crowthorne: Transport and Road Research Laboratory, 1991).

  end of their trip: G. Underwood, P. Chapman, Z. Berger and D. Crundall, “Driving Experience, Attentional Focusing, and the Recall of Recently Inspected Events,” Transportation Research F: Psychology and Behaviour, vol. 6 (2003), pp. 289–304.

  more experienced drivers: P. Chapman, D. Crundall, N. Phelps, and G. Underwood, “The Effects of Driving Experience on Visual Search and Subsequent Memory for Hazardous Driving Situations,” in Behavioural Research in Road Safety: Thirteenth Seminar (London: Department for Transport, 2003), pp. 253–66.

  experience and expertise: When expert chess players are given a short glimpse of a chess board, for example, they can remember almost twice as much of the board’s positions as novices can. For a discussion of this see Groeger, Understanding Driving, p. 101.

  scan the whole picture): See Stine Vogt and Svein Magnussen, “Expertise in Pictorial Perception: Eye-Movement Patterns and Visual Memory in Artists and Laymen,” Perception, vol. 36, no. 1, 2007, pp. 91–100.

  “right above the threshold”: For a more detailed account of McGehee’s study, see Daniel V. McGehee, Mireille Raby, Cher Carney, John D. Lee, and Michelle L. Reyes, “Extending Parental Mentoring Using an Event-Triggered Video Intervention in Rural Teen Drivers,” Journal of Safety Research, vol. 38, no. 2 (2007), pp. 215–27.

  was not the case: “Vehicle Monitoring Systems Please Providers and Patients,” EMS Insider, August 2004, p. 7.

  in the “wrong” lanes: Mohamed Abdel-Aty and J. G. Klodzinski, “Safety Considerations in Designing Electronic Toll Plazas: Case Study,” ITE Journal, March 2001.

  when it is minor: E. Walster, “Assignment of Responsibility for an Accident,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 3 (1966), pp. 73–79.

  no glass was broken: Elizabeth F. Loftus and John C. Palmer, “Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction: An Example of the Interaction Between Language and Memory,” Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1974. This study has been questioned for its “ecological validity” because it took place in a laboratory setting and not in the traumatic, unexpected real-life environment of actually witnessing a car crash and then testifying in court. In those situations, even more distortion could be expected.

  “tend to explain”: J. Stannand Baker, “Single Vehicle Accidents on Route 66,” The Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science, vol. 58, no. 4 (December 1967), pp. 58–95.

  Chapter Three: How Our Eyes and Minds Betray Us on the Road

  “the attention it deserves”: Thanks to Leonard Evans for this quote.

  people who study driving: See, for example, Walter Miles, “Sleeping with the Eyes Open,” Scientific American, June 1929, pp. 489-92.

  one-third of the time: K. Karrer, S. Briest, T. Vohringer-Kuhnt, T. Baumgarten, and R. Schleicher, “Driving Without Awareness,” Unpublished paper, Center of Human-Machine-Systems, Berlin University of Technology, Germany.

  become fully automatic: See John Groeger, Understanding Driving (East Sussex: Psychology Press, 2001), p. 69.

  does not seem overly taxing: Studies have suggested that merely changing one’s speed occasionally can help keep a driver more alert. See Pilar Tejero and Mariano Choliz, “Driving on the Motorway: the Effect of Alternating Speed on Drivers’ Activation Level and Mental Effort,” Ergonomics, vol. 45, no. 9 (2002), pp. 605–18.

  than on a highway: L. Harms, “Drivers’ Attention Responses to Environmental Variation: A Dual-Task Real Traffic Study,” in Vision in Vehicles, ed. A. G. Gale et al. (Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishers, 1986), pp. 131–38.

  the less we actually remember: These findings were reported in L. Bergen, T. Grimes, and D. Potter, “How Attention Partitions Itself During Simultaneous Message Presentations,” Human Communication Research, vol. 31, no. 3 (2005), pp. 311–36. See also C. Blain and R. Meeds, “Effects of Television News Crawls on Viewers’ Memory for Audio Information in Newscasts” (unpublished manuscript, Kansas State University, Manhattan, 2004).

  10.8 times per hour: See J. C. Stutts, J. R. Feaganes, E. A. Rodgman, C. Hamlett, T. Meadows, D. W. Reinfurt, K. Gish, M. Mercadante, and L. Staplin, Distractions in Everyday Driving (Washington, D.C.: AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, 2003). Available at: http://www.aaafoundation.org/pdf/DistractionsInEverydayDriving.pdf.

  for 0.6 seconds: L. Tijerina, “Driver Eye Glance Behavior During Car Following on the Road,” Society of Automotive Engineers Paper 1999-01-1300, 1999.

  skipping a song: Susan L. Chisholm, Jeff K. Caird, Julie Lockhart, Lisa Fern, and Elise Teteris, “Driving Performance While Engaged in MP-3 Player Interaction: Effects of Practice and Task Difficulty on PRT and Eye Movements,” Proceedings of the Fourth International Driving Symposium on Human Factors in Driver Assessment, Training and Vehicle Design (Iowa City, 2007).

  “fifteen-second rule”: See, for example, Paul Green, “The 15-Second Rule for Driver Information Systems,” ITS America Ninth Annual Meeting Conference Proceedings (Washington, D.C.: Intelligent Transportation Society of America, 1999).


  “and they’re in trouble”: This raises the interesting question of why people who were following closer than two seconds did not account for the majority of rear-end crashes, as one might suspect. Klauer suggested that when people “are aggressively tailgating, or trying to maintain their position against all vehicles in their surrounding environment, they’re paying very close attention.” Does that mean we should all tailgate? “It’s an interesting finding,” Klauer said. “We tried to be very careful in the way that we reported that, because that’s exactly what we did not want people to take away from this—‘Oh, tailgating is a perfectly safe thing to do.’ All we’re saying is we didn’t see a whole lot of crashes that were a result of it.” This raises the question of which demon you would rather face: the driver hanging far back but talking on a cell phone or the frenetically attentive tailgater.

  like changing lanes: A simulator study by William Horrey and Daniel Simons found that drivers under “single” and “dual” task conditions did not change the spacing they allowed during lane changing, unlike the greater headway drivers tend to allow when following a car and talking on a cell phone. The authors suggest that “dual-task interference might be more dangerous when drivers must actively decide how to interact with traffic than when their decisions are constrained by the driving context.” W. J. Horrey and D. J. Simons, “Examining Cognitive Interference and Adaptive Safety Behaviors in Tactical Vehicle Control,” Ergonomics, vol. 50, no. 8 (August 2007), pp. 1340–50.

  to their speed: See James Reason, Human Error (Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 1990), p. 81.