Traffic (60 page)

would have been killed: This point was raised in a letter by Leonard Evans in response to the previous article.
American Journal of Preventative Medicine,
vol. 30, no. 6 (2006), p. 532.

“psychophysical numbing”: D. Fetherstonhaugh, P. Slovic, S. Johnson, and J. Friedrich, “Insensitivity to the Value of Human Life: A Study of Psychophysical Numbing,”
Journal of Risk and Uncertainty,
vol. 14, no. 3 (1997), pp. 282–300.

of a terrible disease: Karen E. Jenni and George Lowenstein, “Explaining the ‘Identifiable Victim Effect,’”
Journal of Risk Uncertainty,
vol. 14 (1997), pp. 235–37.

only
one
more child: Paul Slovic, “If I Look at the Mass I Will Never Act: Psychic Numbing and Genocide,”
Judgement and Decision Making,
vol. 2, no. 2 (April 2007), pp. 1–17.

all who died: One exception to this is found at
streetsblog.org
, which has tracked fatalities and crashes in the New York metropolitan area.

“dread” and “novelty”: B. Fischhoff, P. Slovic, S. Lichtenstein, S. Read, and B. Combs, “How Safe Is Safe Enough? A Psychometric Study of Attitudes Towards Technological Risks and Benefits,”
Policy Sciences,
vol. 9 (1978), pp. 127–52.

(like nuclear power): In New York City, an undercurrent of public opinion says that bicycles are “dangerous.” Neighborhoods have fought against the addition of bike lanes for this very reason. Yet one could count the number of people killed by bicycles in New York City each year on one hand, with a few fingers left over, while many times that number of people are killed or severely injured by cars. When I met with Ryan Russo, an engineer with the New York City Department of Transportation, I could not help but hear the echo of several of the reasons why we misperceive risk. “It’s silent and it’s rare,” he told me, when I asked about New Yorkers’ antipathy toward cyclists. “As opposed to cars, which make noise and are prevalent. You don’t see it because it’s smaller, you don’t hear it approach because it’s silent, and you don’t expect it because it’s not prevalent.” A close call with a cyclist, no matter how less dangerous statistically, stands out as the greater risk than a close call with a car, even though—or in fact precisely
because
—pedestrians are constantly having near-hazardous encounters with turning cars in crosswalks.

seem to be misperceived: A classic case, pointed out by Leonard Evans, is the specter of “vehicle recalls.” Every month or so, the news announces that some particular model of car has a potential defect. These recalls haunt us, raising our hackles with a constant stream of exploding tires and potentially faulty brakes. The cumulative result of this, Evans suggested, is that we may come to feel that the greatest threat to a driver’s safety is the improper functioning of his or her vehicle. “They will say on the news there are ‘no injuries reported,’” Evans said. We may feel relieved; the system works. “But the previous night there might have been a thousand people injured in crashes. And we’re told it’s the
recall
that is important.”

those killed by lightning): An analysis by AAA found 10,037 incidents of “violent and aggressive driving” between January 1, 1990, and August 31, 1996, that led to the deaths of 218 people. An estimated 37 percent of those cases involved a firearm. Cited by David K. Willis of AAA in
Road Rage: Causes and Dangers of Aggressive Driving; Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Surface Interpretation of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure,
105th Congress, 1st Session, 1997. As Michael Fumento has pointed out, in the same time span that these 218 “aggressive driving” deaths were registered, some 290,000 people were killed on the road. See Fumento, “‘Road Rage’ vs. Reality,”
Atlantic Monthly,
August 1998.

than pistol-packing drivers: Traces of the sleeping pill Ambien, not taken as prescribed, have been showing up in the bloodstreams of drivers involved in crashes. See Stephanie Saul, “Some Sleeping Pill Users Range Far Beyond Bed,”
New York Times,
March 8, 2006. But many other drugs of the kind that typically warn users not to “operate heavy machinery” while taking them also show up in the bodies of drivers (who apparently forget that cars are heavy machinery); for example, dextromethorphan, a synthetic analogue of codeine that appears frequently in over-the-counter medicines. See Amy Cochems, Patrick Harding, and Laura Liddicoat, “Dextromethorphan in Wisconsin Drivers,”
Journal of Analytical Toxicology,
vol. 31, no. 4 (May 2007), pp. 227–32.

if they pick the numbers: This phenomenon was described by psychologist Ellen Langer, who called it the “illusion of control.” See E. J. Langer, “The Illusion of Control,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
vol. 32, no. 2 (1975), pp. 311–28.

real dangers cars present: Consider, for example, the fact that, in the United States at least, hardly any children walk to school anymore—the figure has dropped from 48 percent in 1969 to under 15 percent in 2001. One perceived reason is “stranger danger.” But abductions, by strangers or family members, the U.S. Department of Justice has noted, make up only 2 percent of violent crimes against juveniles. Riding in the family car, and not “stranger danger,” is the greatest risk to people aged four to thirty-seven in the United States (and many other places). The car is actually a risk before it even leaves the driveway. In 2007, more than two hundred children were killed in the United States in “nontraffic fatalities,” a grim category that includes everything from “backover” incidents (typically in “safe” SUVs) to the hyperthermia of children unintentionally left in cars. For abduction statistics, see D. Finklehor and R. Ormrod, “Kidnapping of Juveniles: Patterns from NIBRS,”
Juvenile Justice Bulletin,
June 2000. Children’s walk-to-school rates come from Reid Ewing, Christopher V. Forinash, and William Schroeer, “Neighborhood Schools and Sidewalk Connections: What Are the Impacts on Travel Mode Choice and Vehicle Emissions?,”
TR News,
vol. 237 (March–April 2005). School bus fatality risks are taken from Ann M. Dellinger and Laurie Beck, “How Risky Is the Commute to School,”
TR News,
vol. 237 (March–April 2005).

more dangerous it is: This information comes from a study by William Lucy, a University of Virginia professor of urban planning. His findings are based on two key mortality indices: chance of being killed by a stranger and risk of being killed in traffic. See Lucy, “Mortality Risk Associated with Leaving Home: Recognizing the Relevance of the Built Environment,”
American Journal of Public Health,
vol. 93, no. 9 (September 2003), pp. 1564–69.

(roughly 22 miles per hour): In 2006, there were 14 traffic fatalities recorded in Bermuda, though that number was set to rise to 20 in 2007. See Tim Smith, “Call for Greater Police Presence to Tackle Road Deaths ‘Epidemic,’”
Royal Gazette,
November 24, 2007. This is actually quite a high number for a country with a population of some 66,000 (not including the many tourists who visit). Typically, however, 80 percent of these fatalities involve the riders or passengers of motorbikes, and a high percentage of those involve tourists who are either unfamiliar with the roads (or the bikes) or presumably have been drinking. Tourists in Bermuda are estimated to be almost six times at risk for being injured on a motorbike than are local residents. See M. Carey, M. Aitken, “Motorbike Injuries in Bermuda: A Risk for Tourists,”
Annals of Emergency Medicine,
vol. 28, Issue 4, pp. 424–29. Other studies have shown tourists to be overrepresented in car crashes. See C. Sanford, “Urban Medicine: Threats to Health of Travelers to Developing World Cities,”
Journal of Travel Medicine,
vol. 11, no. 5 (2004), pp. 313–27. John Adams brought up the Bermuda example in his book
Risk and Freedom: The Record of Road Safety
(Cardiff: Transport Publishing Projects, 1985), p. 2. He quotes, in turn, Herman Kahn,
The Next 200 Years
(New York: William Morrow, 1976), p. 168.

cars and cyclists: Based on a conversation with city manager Judie Zimomra and police department records specialist Bob Conklin. Zimomra noted that there were traffic fatalities in the 1990s, but subsequent enforcement and engineering efforts have proven successful. The lesson: Speed is important, but hardly the only issue.

lowers crash risks: C. N. Kloeden, A. J. McClean, and G. Glonek, “Reanalysis of Travelling Speed and Risk of Crash Involvement in Adelaide, South Australia,” Australian Transport Safety Bureau Report CR 207, April 2002.

Adams calls “hypermobility”: See John Adams, “Hypermobility: Too Much of a Good Thing?,” Royal Society for the Arts Lecture, November 21, 2001. Retrieved at
http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/~jadams/publish.htm
.

roughly half the crashes: See Cherian Varghese and Umesh Shankar, “Restraint Use Patterns Among Fatally Injured Passenger Vehicle Occupants,” DOT HS 810 595, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, May 2006.

slow level of 35 miles per hour: From a report prepared by Michael Paine, based on data taken from the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration from 1993 to 1997; retrieved from
http://users.tpg.au/users/mpaine/speed/html
.

(among other things): An observational study of a random sample of drivers in New York City found that those talking on a hands-free device were more likely to engage in other distracting activities (e.g., smoking, eating, grooming) than those speaking on a handheld cell phone. As the researchers observed, the drivers “may be trading one automobile-related risk for another.” See “Driving Distractions in New York City,” Hunter College, November 2007.

Epilogue: Driving Lessons

to pass the front: For an excellent discussion of the physics of oversteering and understeering, as well as driving in general, see Barry Parker,
The Isaac Newton School of Driving: Physics and Your Car
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).

to maintain our course?: W. O. Readinger, A. Chatziastros, D. W. Cunningham, J. E. Cutting, and H. H. Bülthoff, “Gaze-Direction Effects on Drivers’ Abilities to Steer a Straight Course,”
TWK Beiträge zur 4. Tübinger Wahrnehmungskonferenz,
ed. H. H. Bülthoff, K. R. Gegenfurtner, H. A. Mallot, R. Ulrich. Knirsch, Kirchentellinsfurt, 149 (2001). Available at
http://www.kyb.mpg.de/publication.htm?publ=67
.

“doing so at all”: See W. O. Readinger, A. Chatziastros, D. W. Cunningham, H. H. Bülthoff, and J. E. Cutting, “Gaze-Eccentricity Effects on Road Position and Steering,”
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied,
vol. 8, no. 4 (2002), pp. 247–58.

“might be your English teacher”: Actually, the traditional model of high school driver’s ed—usually classroom instruction plus on-road time—has been largely discredited. The reasons have less to do with the worth or validity of learning the rules of the road than with the fact that such programs, rather than helping to produce safer drivers, just seem to put more unsafe drivers on the road at a younger age. A number of studies have come to this conclusion, but see, in particular, J. Vernick, G. Li, S. Ogaitis, E. MacKenzie, S. Baker, and A. Gielen, “Effects of High School Driver Education on Motor Vehicle Crashes, Violations, and Licensure,”
American Journal of Preventive Medicine,
vol. 16, no. 1 (1999), pp. 40–46; M. F. Smith, “Research Agenda for an Improved Novice Driver Education Program: Report to Congress, May 31, 1994,” DOT HS 808 161, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, retrieved from
www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/research/pub/drive-ed.pdf
; and I. Roberts and L. Kwan, “School Based Driver Education for the Prevention of Traffic Crashes,”
Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews,
no. 2 (2006).

skills needed to drive: Thanks to Leonard Evans for this reference.

stock-car drivers: A. F. Williams and B. O’Neill, “On-the-Road Driving Records of Licensed Race Drivers,”
Accident Analysis & Prevention,
vol. 6 (1974), pp. 263–70.

“not going fast enough”: Thanks to Leonard Evans for Andretti Quote.

to go next: Vision researchers studied the eye and head movements of Formula 3 racer Tomas Scheckter as he drove on the Mallory Park circuit in Leceistershire, England. They suggested that Scheckter, because he had learned the layout of the track, actually moved his head in the direction in which he wanted to go before he adjusted his steering. See Michael F. Land and Benjamin W. Tatler, “Steering with the Head: The Visual Strategy of a Racing Driver,”
Current Biology,
vol. 11 (2001), pp. 1215–20.

to avoid a crash: For an excellent summary of the research, see Lisa D. Adams, “Review of the Literature on Obstacle Avoidance Maneuvers: Braking Versus steering,” Report No. UMTRI-94-19, University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, Ann Arbor, August 1994.

the only thing to do: Jeffrey Muttart raises the idea of “operant conditioning” in “Factors That Influence Drivers’ Response Choice Decisions in Video Recorded Crashes,”
Society of Automotive Engineers Journal,
2005.

to their full power: See Rodger J. Koppa and Gordon G. Hayes, “Driver Inputs During Emergency or Extreme Vehicle Maneuvers,”
Human Factors,
vol. 18, no. 4 (1976), pp. 361–70.

the obstacle is moving: D. Fleury, F. Fernandez, C. Lepesant, and D. Lechner, “Analyse typologique des manoeuvres d’urgence en intersection,”
Rapport de recherche INRETS,
no. 62 (1988), quoted in Lisa D. Adams, 1994.

to the point where we do nothing: Michael A. Dilich, Dror Kopernik, and John M. Goebelbecker, “Evaluating Driver Response to a Sudden Emergency: Issues of Expectancy, Emotional Arousal, and Uncertainty,”
Safety Brief,
vol. 20, no. 4 (June 2002). A frequent occurrence in driving simulator studies that seek to evaluate how drivers respond to unexpected obstacles or hazards is that a small number of subjects often have “no response.” A French study, for example, in which drivers on a test track had to react to an inflatable “dummy car,” found that 4 percent of subjects did nothing, simply “freezing.” See Christian Collett, Claire Petit, Alain Priez, and Andre Dittmar, “Stroop Color-Word Test, Arousal, Electrodermal Activity and Performance in a Critical Driving Situation,”
Biological Psychology,
vol. 69 (2005), pp. 195–203.