Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do

More fully, Tom Vanderbilt wrote Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us). I liked the book a lot, though much of it felt familiar. The book is less about technological issues contributing to traffic, but about the sociological side of it.

The book is divided into nine chapters, each with two to four major sections. The first three chapters do a good job of establishing human biases, and explaining how our hardwiring affects how we see the world, particularly while we’re enclosed alone in a car. They also establish how difficult driving really is– and the biases that lead us to overestimate our competence, underestimate threats, etc.

Chapters 4 and 5 are bigger picture, about a systemic overview of the process. Interestingly, parking is targeted as a major component of traffic, due to circling, the way it blocks entire traffic lanes, etc. Chapter six talks about how our individual problem optimizing leads to the overall problems– there are a lot of tragedy of the commons issues in driving.

Chapter seven was the most familiar (due to ASCE articles); a lot of discussion about how things that feel unsafe (like roundabouts) can be much safer, just because it makes you more alert. It also talks about some of the efforts in the Netherlands to incorporate cards more into village life instead of giving spaces over completely to cars– and some of the unusual effects that result.

Chapter 8 was about local traffic variations– particularly how varied traffic can be in third world nations and rapidly developing nations. Chapter nine has a few loosely connected themes; how statistics don’t match our perceptions and concludes with a discussion of new technologies… and how they aren’t any more likely to dramatically revolutionize things than the last hundred inventions that promised to revolutionize driving and traffic.

All in all it is a good introduction to the subject. I suspect everyone will be familiar with some of the points brought up– through casual exposure, drivers education, etc. There’s a huge breadth here– I doubt anyone, even traffic engineers and other professionals, have looked at the problems of traffic from all of the angles mentioned. Check it out if you want a better handle on why traffic is the way it is– and why that frustrates us so much.