Traffic (56 page)

behavior either way: There have been several studies of jaywalking and model behavior. See, for instance, Monroe Lefkowitz, Robert R. Blake, and Jane Srygley Mouton, “Status Factors in Pedestrian Violation of Traffic Signals,”
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology,
vol. 51 (1955), pp. 704–06, and Brian Mullen, Carolyn Copper, and James E. Driskell, “Jaywalking as a Function of Model Behavior,”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,
vol. 16, no. 2 (1990), pp. 320–30.

are famously orderly: Joe Moran makes the point that people in England have been “complaining about the disintegration of queue discipline for almost as long as they have been lauding the queue as the essence of British decency—perhaps because this myth carries such symbolic weight that it cannot be sustained by the necessarily messier reality.” From Joe Moran,
Queuing for Beginners
(London: Profile Books, 2007), p. 92.

more in theory than reality: Liu Shinan argues that Chinese do queue up when queuing itself is the norm: “We queue where we are accustomed to queue, for example, at a cinema booking office or at the cashier’s counter in a supermarket. In many places where we are not accustomed to queue, however, we do not queue—for example, in front of an elevator or subway door.” Liu Shinan, “Behavior of Tourists Has No Quick Fix,”
China Daily,
November 10, 2006.

to be slight: One study found the correlation between “service quality” and tipping to be just 0.07 percent. See Michael Conlin, Ted O’Donohue, and Michael Lynn, “The Norm of Restaurant Tipping,”
Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization,
vol. 52 (2003), pp. 297–321. For an excellent overview of the quite extensive academic literature on tipping, I recommend the work of Ofer Azar, an economist at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, particularly “The Social Norm of Tipping: A Review,”
Journal of Applied Social Psychology,
vol. 37, no. 2 (2007), pp. 380–402.

“obeying the law”: See Amir Licht, “Social Norms and the Law: Why People Obey the Law,” a working paper available at
http://www.faculty.idc.ac.il/licht/papers.htm
.

to nearly 84,000: Sheng-Yong Wang, Gui-Bo Chi, Chun-Xia Jing, Xiao-Mei Dong, Chi-Peng Wu, and Li-Ping Li, “Trends in Road Traffic Crashes and Associated Injury and Fatality in the People’s Republic of China, 1951–1999,”
Injury Control and Safety Promotion,
vol. 10, nos. 1–2 (2003), pp. 83–87.

roughly 49 million:
New York Times,
July 22, 1951.

Smeed’s law: R. J. Smeed, “Some Statistical Aspects of Road Safety Research,”
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A (General),
vol. 112, no. 1 (1949), pp. 1–34.

as low as 10 percent: Vinand M. Nantulya and Michael R. Reich, “The Neglected Epidemic: Road Traffic Injuries in Developing Countries,”
British Medical Journal,
May 2002, pp. 1139–41.

a staggering 80 percent: Mohan,
The Road Ahead,
op. cit. pp. 1–30.

onto the same thoroughfare: In a discussion paper for the World Bank, Christopher Willoughby notes that “the current problems of motorization seem not generally to result from its occurring at lower per capita income levels, or more rapidly, than in the countries which coped with it reasonably satisfactorily in earlier years; it also grew very fast there for prolonged periods, especially in France (and Germany). The problems tend to be connected rather with the higher concentration of national population, economic activity and motorization itself in one or a very few major cities, at times when those cities are also increasing in size and population much more rapidly than was the case in Europe or Japan.” From Christopher Willoughby, “Managing Motorization,” Discussion Paper TWU-42, World Bank; available at:
http://www.world-bank.org/transport/publicat/twu_42.pdf
.

nearly 100 percent: For a fascinating discussion of history of automobile insurance in China and recent reforms, see J. Tim Query and Daqing Huang, “Designing a New Automobile Insurance Pricing System in China: Actuarial and Social Considerations,”
Casualty Actuarial Society Forum,
Winter 2007.

to West Germany’s 130: Flaura K. Winston, Craig Rineer, Rajiv Menon, and Susan P. Baker, “The Carnage Wrought by Major Economic Change: Ecological Study of Traffic Related Mortality and the Reunification of Germany,”
British Medical Journal,
vol. 318 (June 19, 1999), pp. 1647–50.

begin to accelerate: See Richard Dahl, “Heavy Traffic Ahead: Car Culture Accelerates,”
Environmental Health Perspectives,
April 2005.

Maureen Cropper shows: Elizabeth Kopits and Maureen Cropper, “Traffic Fatalities and Economic Growth,”
Accident Analysis & Prevention,
vol. 37 (2005), pp. 169–78.

terms of traffic safety: Based on statistics from the International Traffic Safety Data and Analysis Group; retrieved on January 13, 2007, from
http://cemt.org/IRTAD/IRTADPUBLIC/we2.htm
.

some 160 deaths per 10,000 vehicles:
World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention
(Geneva: World Health Organization and World Bank, April 4, 2004).

“to use the buses”: BBC, February 28, 2001. Accessed from:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1186572.stm
.

slightly higher in Belgium):
Pocket World in Figures 2007
(London: Economist, 2007).

risk of traffic fatalities: See Theodore E. Keeler, “Highway Safety, Economic Behavior, and Driving Environment,”
American Economic Review,
vol. 84, no. 3 (1994), pp. 684–93, and Reid Ewing, Richard A. Schieber, and Charles V. Zegeer, “Urban Sprawl as a Risk Factor in Motor Vehicle Occupant and Pedestrian Fatalities,”
American Journal of Public Health,
vol. 93, no. 9 (2003), pp. 1541–45.

Belgium had 522:
World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention,
op. cit., p. 198.

fairness of the process: Tom R. Tyler,
Why People Obey the Law
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006).

The information on Belgium’s traffic enforcement comes from Lode Vereeck and Lieber Deben, “An International Comparison of the Effectiveness of Traffic Safety Enforcement Policies,” unpublished paper, Limburg University, Belgium, 2003.

lowest crash rates in the world: Retrieved from the International Road Traffic and Accident Database (IRTAD), at
http://cemt.org/IRTAD/IRTADPUBLIC/we2.htm
.

after-tax income: Before 1999, fines were based on
pre
tax income, says Heikki Summala of the Traffic Research Unit at the University of Helsinki. This means fines have dropped between 20 and 60 percent, but at the same time minimum fines were raised, so revenue has in fact increased. E-mail correspondence with Heikki Summala, November 9, 2007.

Jaakko Rytsölä: The Finnish speeding ticket information comes from Steve Stecklow, “Finnish Drivers Don’t Mind Sliding Scale, but Instant Calculation Gets Low Marks,”
Wall Street Journal,
January 2, 2001.

return to shortly: A Finnish public-opinion poll in 2001 found that 66 percent of male drivers and 73 percent of male nondrivers felt the fine system was fair, while 77 percent of female drivers and 78 percent of female nondrivers thought it fair. The data comes from a study (in Finnish): T. Lappi-Seppälä, “Public Opinion and the 1999 Reform of the Day-Fine System,” National Research Institute of Legal Policy, Publication No. 195, Helsinki, 2002. Thanks to Heikki Summala for providing the numbers.

rather stagnant: In 2003, for example, according to Eurostat, it grew just .50 percent. Data obtained from
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu
. Had the GDP risen, there may have been an increase in fatalities, reflecting the higher amounts of driving due to economic vitality—but it certainly would not have been by enough to offset the huge reductions in fatalities.

been in a crash): E. Lagarde, M. Chiron, and S. Lafont. “Traffic Ticket Fixing and Driving Behaviours in a Large French Working Population,”
Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health,
vol. 58 (2004), pp. 562–68.

hundreds of traffic fatalities: Alexandre Dorozynski, “French Elections Can Kill,”
British Medical Journal,
November 3, 2001, p. 1021.

The lesson is: At least one analysis posits that income equality is related in a linear fashion to traffic fatalities; e.g., in both poor, and, to a lesser extent, wealthy countries, the traffic fatality rate may be affected by the level of income equality. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Scandinavian countries, among the leaders in income equality, also rank near the top in traffic safety. See Nejat Anbarci, Monica Escaleras, and Charles Register, “Income, Income Inequality and the ‘Hidden Epidemic’ of Traffic Fatalities,” No. 5002, Working Papers from Department of Economics, College of Business, Florida Atlantic University. Retrieved from
http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/falwpaper/05002.htm
.

and
traffic fatalities: This relationship is argued in, among other sources, D. Treisman, “The Causes of Corruption: A Cross-National Study,”
Journal of Public Economics,
no. 76 (June 2000), pp. 399–457.

income and traffic fatalities: See Nejat Anbarci, Monica Escaleras, Monica Register, and Charles A. Register, “Traffic Fatalities and Public Sector Corruption,”
Kyklos,
vol. 59, no. 3 (August 2006), pp. 327–44; available at
http://ssrn.com/abstract=914243
.

of Europe’s road fatalities: See “Fools and Bad Roads,”
Economist,
March 22, 2007.

rewards inefficient firms: For a good review of the various debates over corruption and growth, see P. Bardhan, “Corruption and Development: A Review of Issues,”
Journal of Economic Literature,
vol. 35 (September 1997), pp. 1320–46.

beneath the acceptable “minimum”: See Daniel Kaufmann, “Corruption: The Facts,”
Foreign Policy,
no. 107 (Summer 1997), pp. 114–31.

because
of corruption: The most extreme case of this may be Lagos, the largest city in Nigeria and predicted to be among the world’s largest cities in the next decade. The average commuter in Lagos is said to face myriad challenges. These begin with the crumbling roads and infrastructure, which have scarcely been repaired since being erected in the oil boom of the 1970s; they themselves are a kind of symbol of the endemic corruption of Nigeria, where close to $400 billion in oil revenues were sequestered out of the country in a forty-year period. Other challenges include arbitrary fees charged at will by bus drivers and their quasi-official associates, the
agberos,
not to mention the numerous unofficial roadblocks, manned by gangs of unemployed “area boys,” that drivers must navigate. The multiple levels of corruption present in—and contributing to—Lagos’s epic “go-slows” were demonstrated in an astonishing story told by the journalist George Packer. While riding on the streets of Lagos, Packer’s driver was stopped by an
agbero,
who demanded money to help the driver negotiate
another
bribe, with the official traffic police. The traffic cop intervened, if only to collect the bribe—not doing so, it seemed, would actually make the police officer look as if he were derelict in his duty. See George Packer, “The Megacity: Decoding the Chaos of Lagos,”
New Yorker,
November 26, 2006. See also Adewale Ajayi,
Nigerian Tribune,
March 2, 2007; and Osise Dibosa, “Olubunmi Peters and Ferma,”
This Day,
June 12, 2007.

take their place: Benjamin A. Olken and Patrick Barron, “The Simple Economics of Extortion: Evidence from Trucking in Aceh,” NBER Working Paper No. 13145, National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2007.

“work repairing potholes”: Robert Guest, “The Road to Hell Is Unpaved,”
Economist,
December 19, 2002.

“actual driving skill”: The Delhi driving-license experiment is detailed in Marianne Bertrand, Simeon Djankov, Rema Hanna, and Sendhil Mullainathan, “Does Corruption Produce Unsafe Drivers?” NBER Working Paper No. 12274, National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2006.

“clarity of purpose”: This line comes from Pavan K. Varma,
Being Indian
(London: Penguin Books, 2005), p. 79.

some 150,000 tickets: Raymond J. Fisman and Edward Miguel, “Cultures of Corruption: Evidence from Diplomatic Parking Tickets,” NBER Working Paper No. W12312 (June 2006). Retrieved at
http://ssrn.com/abstract=910844
.

the city of London: Retrieved from
Channel Four News Online,
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/society/environment/diplomatic+ccharge+bill+ tops+45m/569892
.

pays the charge: Nicola Woolcock, “Nations Unite to Join a Boycott of Congestion Charge,”
Times
(London), February 21, 2007.

norms regarding them: This is why we can often see compliance with traffic laws differing even
within
a country. In Italy, corruption is more endemic in the south than the north, for reasons, as mentioned in an earlier note, having to do with varying degrees of civic culture. And so as the state seems to gradually wither away the farther south you go, so too does the traffic behavior come to have less to do with the law. In 2000, a national helmet law was passed for motorcyclists of any age. Afterward, usage rates in the north were reported as high as 95 percent. In the south, however, they were only as high as 70 percent, and as low as 50 percent. For corruption levels, see Alfredo del Monte and Erasmo Papagni, “The Determinants of Corruption in Italy: Regional Panel Data Analysis,”
European Journal of Political Economy,
vol. 23 (June 2007), pp. 379–96. For helmet-use rates, see F. Servadei, C. Begliomini, E. Gardini, M. Giustini, F. Taggi, and J. Kraus, “Effect of Italy’s Motorcycle Helmet Law on Traumatic Brain Injuries,”
Injury Prevention,
vol. 9, no. 3 (2003), pp. 257–60.

casualties there will be: See D. Parker, J. T. Reason, A. S. R. Manstead, and S. G. Stradling, “Driving Errors, Driving Violations and Accident Involvement,”
Ergonomics,
vol. 38 (1995), pp. 1036–48.

more women in government: Anand Swamy, Stephen Knack, Young Lee, and Omar Azfar, “Gender and Corruption,” Center for Development Economics, Department of Economics, Williams College, 2000.