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Amazon Best of the Month, July 2008: How could no one have written this book before? These days we spend almost as much time driving as we do eating (in fact, we do a lot of our eating while driving), but I can't remember the last time I saw a book on all the time we spend stuck in our cars. It's a topic of nearly universal interest, though: everybody has a strategy for beating the traffic. Tom Vanderbilt's Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) has plenty of advice for those shortcut schemers (Vanderbilt may well convince you to become, as he has, a dreaded "Late Merger"), but more than that it's the sort of wide-ranging contrarian compendium that makes a familiar subject new. I'm not the first or last to call Traffic the Freakonomics of cars, but it's true that it fits right in with the school of smart and popular recent books by Leavitt, Gladwell, Surowiecki, Ariely, and others that use the latest in economic, sociological, psychological, and in this case civil engineering research to make us rethink a topic we live with every day. Want to know how much city traffic is just people looking for parking? (It's a lot.) Or why street signs don't work (but congestion pricing does), why new cars crash more than old cars, and why Saturdays now have the worst traffic of the week? Read Traffic, or better yet, listen to the audio book on your endless commute. --Tom Nissley

Questions for Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic

Q: Was this book really born on a New Jersey highway?
A: Yes, though it could have been any highway in the world, where countless drivers, driving on a crowded road that is about to lose a lane, have had to make a simple decision: When to merge. For my entire driving life, I had always merged "early," thinking it was the polite and efficient thing to do. I viewed those who kept driving to the merge point, to the front of line, as selfish jerks who were making life miserable for the rest of us. I began to wonder: Were they really making things worse? Was I making things worse? Could merging be made easier? Why were there late mergers and early mergers, and why did people get so worked up about the whole thing? In that everyday moment I seemed to sense a vast, largely under-explored wilderness before me: Traffic.

Q: Is it true that the most common cause of stress on the highway is merging? Why of the myriad things to cause stress on the road is this at the top?
A: Merging is the most stressful single activity we face in everyday driving, according to a survey by the Texas Transportation Institute. People who have done studies at highway construction work zones have also told me of extraordinarily bad behavior, triggered by this simple act of trying to get two lanes of traffic into one. Sometimes, it?s simply the difficult mechanics of driving ? trying to enter a stream of traffic flowing at a higher speed than you are, for example. Drivers, to quote a physicist who was actually talking about grains, are objects "who do not easily interact." But I also think there?s something about the forward flow of traffic that makes us register progress only by our own unimpeded movement; as in life, we seem to register losses more powerfully than gains, and registering these losses boosts stress.

Q: You say that, "For most of us who are not brain surgeons, driving is probably the most complex everyday thing we do in our lives." How so?
A: Researchers have estimated there are anywhere from 1500 to 2500 discrete skills and activities we undertake while driving. Even the simplest thing ? shifting gears ? is a decision-making process consuming what is called "cognitive workload." We?re operating heavy machinery at speeds beyond our long evolutionary history, absorbing (and discarding) huge amounts of information, and having to make snap decisions ? often based on limited situational awareness, guesses about what others are going to do, or a hazy knowledge of the actual traffic law. It took years of research, for example, by some of the country?s top robotics researchers, to create expensive, sophisticated self-driving "autonomous vehicles" that are basically mediocre beginning drivers that you?d never want to let loose in everyday traffic. When we forget that driving isn?t necessarily as easy as it seems to be, we get into trouble.

Q: Drivers polled in America say the roads are getting less civil with each passing year. ?Road Rage? is an ever more common term. What is to blame? Hummers? Or are we just getting ruder?
A: Every year, more people are driving more miles, so one reason for the sense that the roads are getting less civil is simply that there are many more chances for you to have an encounter with an aggressive or rude driver. It?s tough to put numbers on it, but I happen to feel, like many people, that behavior has gotten qualitatively worse ? surveys have suggested, for example, that using the turn signal is an increasingly optional activity. Leaving aside the issue that not signaling is illegal (because, let?s face it, we?re never going to be able ticket everyone who doesn?t do it, nor do we probably want to), it?s one of those small things, requiring little effort from the driver, that makes traffic flow more smoothly ? I myself have honked countless times at "idiots" slowing for no apparent reason, only to seem them eventually make a turn. It?s antisocial behavior, the equivalent of having the door held open for you and saying nothing in return. So why don?t people signal? My immediate theory is that they?re using a cell phone and are distracted or physically incapable of signaling. But a deeper reason, I suspect, may be seen in the surveys of psychologists who measure narcissism in American culture. They find, as time goes on, more people are willing to say things like "If I ruled the world, it would be a better place." Traffic is filled with people who think that roads belong only to them ? it?s "MySpace" ? that being inside the car absolves them from any obligation to anyone else. People are glad to tell you that their child is a middle school honor student ? as if anyone cared! ? but they deem it less important to tell you what they?re going to do in traffic.

Q: So much of what you uncover about life on the road seems counterintuitive. Like the fact that drivers drive closer to oncoming cars when there is a center line divider then when there is not; that most accidents happen close to home in familiar, not foreign, surroundings; that dangerous roads can be safer; safer cars can be more dangerous; that suburbs are often riskier than the inner city; the roundabout safer than the intersection. When it comes to traffic why are things so different from how we instinctively perceive them?
A: I think part of the reason is it?s easy for us to confuse what feels dangerous or safe in the moment and what might be, in a larger sense, safe or dangerous. We have a windshield?s eye view of driving that sometimes blinds us to larger realities or skews our perception. Roundabouts feel dangerous because of all the work one has to do, like looking for an opening, jockeying for positioning. But it?s precisely because we have to do all that, and because of the way roundabouts are designed, that we have to slow down. By contrast, it feels quite "safe" to sail through a big intersection where the lights are telling you that you have the right to speed through. We can, in essence, put our brain on hold. But those same intersections contain so many more chances for what engineers call "conflict," and at much higher speeds, than roundabouts. So when what seems quite safe suddenly turns quite dangerous ? will we be as well prepared? Similarly, we might be reassured that that yellow or white dividing line on a road is telling us where we should be, but how does that knowledge then change our behavior, to the point where may actually be driving closer ? and faster ? to the stream of oncoming traffic? Accidents are more likely to occur closer to home. Mostly this is because we do most driving closer to home, but studies do show that we pay less attention to signs and signals on local roads, because we "know" them, yet this knowledge actually give us a false sense of security.

Q: What were some of the things that most surprised you in researching this book?
A: Things that surprised me the most were those that challenged my own long-held beliefs as a driver, like that "late mergers" simply must be somehow worse for the traffic flow at work-zones, that roundabouts were dangerous places, that warning signs were there because they must be working, that car drivers were more of a contributing factor in truck-car crashes than truck drivers. It was also quite a revelation to learn about the many ways our eyes and our minds deceive us while driving, the ways we "look but don?t see," the way we sometimes believe, to slightly change up the warning our mirrors gives us, that objects are further away than they actually are. Then there were the things I had never really thought about, but were surprising nonetheless ? that drivers seem to pass closer to cyclists when those cyclists are wearing helmets, how the ways in which drivers honk at each other contain subtle indications of status and demographics, how much traffic on the streets is simply people looking for parking. I was also unpleasantly surprised to learn how far the U.S. had slipped in terms of traffic safety in the world, where it was once the leader.

Q: You write, "The truth is the road itself tells us far more than signs do." So do traffic signs work?
A: We?ve probably all had the somewhat absurd moment of driving in the country, past a big red barn, the pungent smell of cow manure on the breeze, and then seeing a yellow traffic sign with a cow on it. Does anyone need that sign to remind them that cows may be nearby? To quote Hans Monderman, the legendary Dutch traffic engineer who was opposed to excessive signing, "if you treat people like idiots, they?ll act like idiots." Then again, perhaps someone did come blazing along and hit a crossing cow or a tractor, and in response engineers may have been forced to put up a sign. The question is: Would that person have done that regardless of the sign? The bulk of evidence is that people don?t change their behavior in the presence of such signs. Children playing, School zone? People speed through those warnings, faster than they even thought, if you query them later. To take another example, the majority of people killed at railroad crossings in the U.S. are killed at crossings where the gates are down. If this is insufficient warning that they should not cross the tracks then is a sign warning that a train might be coming really going to change behavior? At what point do people need to rely on their own judgment? We as humans seem to act on the message that traffic signs give us in complex ways ? studies have shown, for example, that people drive faster around curved roads that are marked with signs telling them the road is curved. We tend to behave more cautiously in the face of uncertainty.

Q: What is "psychological traffic calming"?
A: Traditional "traffic calming" relies on putting big, visually obvious obstructions in the road, like speed bumps, or the wider, flatter speed humps. Unfortunately, since the bulk of drivers, like tantrum-throwing toddlers, really don?t like to be calmed, a lot of these don?t work as well as hoped, or produce negative, unintended consequences, like the fact that people will raise their speed between the bumps to make up for the time lost slowing to traverse the bump. So-called "psychological traffic calming" basically tries to calm traffic without drivers even realizing they?re being calmed. It does so through things like reducing the width of roads, using pavements of different colors or textures, even removing center-line dividers, which studies have shown is one way to get drivers to slow down. Even creating visual interest along the side of the road, a no-no in traditional traffic engineering because it?s a "distraction," can be used to calm traffic ? when something?s worth seeing, after all, people slow down. The most radical approach is removing any signage at all, and forcing drivers to rely on their own wits, as well as the dynamics of human interaction, as has been seen in some interesting experiments in the Netherlands.

Q: You cite 20 miles per hour as the speed at which eye contact becomes impossible. How central to understanding traffic, and human communication generally, is this statistic?
A: Eye contact is a fundamental human signal ? all kinds of studies have shown, for example, how people are more likely to cooperate with one another when they can make eye contact. When we don?t have it, when we become anonymous, we not only lose some of that impulse towards cooperation, we seem to become susceptible to all kinds of behavior we might not otherwise engage in. In most driving situations, of course, we lose eye contact, and have to make do with our rather limited vocabulary of traffic signals. At much slower speeds, however, like those seen in the experimental roundabouts in the Netherlands were most signage has been stripped away, it is fascinating to see how intricately all the traffic can interweave ? exactly because some of those human signals have been restored.

Q: We?ve all had the experience of the annoying passenger who can?t stop critiquing our driving when we know are driving just perfectly. Then again, we?ve all been the back seat driver to people who think they are driving perfectly when we know for sure they are about to kill us. What accounts for the way drivers vs. passengers experience the same ride?
A: First of all, I should stress that passengers, even annoying back-seat drivers, are good for us: Statistics show that people are less likely to crash when they are accompanied in the car (except, interestingly, teen drivers). But there?s several interesting things going on between drivers and passengers. For one, driving as an activity often lacks regular feedback ? we?re often not aware in the moment of how close to a crash we almost came, or our own culpability in that. Secondly, drivers tend to self-enhance. They all tend to think they are better than average, or at least average drivers ? it?s been called the "Lake Woebegone Effect." Passengers are not caught up in this dynamic ? there?s no such thing as a "better than average" passenger ? nor do they feel themselves joined to the mechanics of the car, the way a driver does. Brain scans of people doing simulated driving have even revealed different results from people acting as simulated passengers. In the end, a back-seat driver, like it or not, is providing feedback, the same way someone can view footage of their golf swing to learn what they couldn?t see in the moment.

Q: You talk about numerous experiments going on around the world to study traffic, what are some of the ones that you found most interesting?
A: One of the most fascinating things that is happening, thanks to technology like TiVo style cameras and feedback sensors, is that researchers are becoming increasingly able to study how drivers really behave on the road, learning curious details about, for example, how much time drivers spend looking in certain places ? forward at the road, in the rear-view mirrors, away from traffic, at the radio, etc. With companies like DriveCam, this information is actually being used to coach drivers ? beginners but also experienced drivers ? based on the crashes they narrowly avoided. The work of Hans Monderman, who unfortunately died in January, in the Netherlands was also utterly fascinating. Faced with a visually unappealing, traffic clogged intersection in the heart of the Dutch city of Drachten, Monderman turned it into a roundabout, with fountains and plantings but no traffic lights and virtually no signage ? the result, more than a year later, is the traffic moves more efficiently through the town, and there have been fewer crashes. It was also quite memorable to be in Los Angeles? "traffic bunker" on Oscar Night. They set up special traffic patterns so that the stars? limos can all get to the red carpet at roughly the same time. It was striking to see how one person, sitting alone at a computer screen, can orchestrate the whole city?s flows, its competing patterns of desire.

Q: You have been all over the world studying traffic. So, where was it the worst and how does the city in which we live dictate our highway behavior?
A: It depends on how you define worst! I?ve been in nasty jams from Seoul to San Francisco. The places that felt the most chaotic were cities like Hanoi, which currently has the highest level of motorbikes per capita in the world, and where, in many parts of the city, the only way one can cross the street is by simply wading into the flow. New Delhi was also quite unnerving, not just for the hustle and bustle of so many modes of transportation on the road at once, but the chronic disobedience of traffic rules. In Beijing, where "driver" not that long ago was only the title of a job, driving was hectic but I found it quite difficult as well to be a pedestrian ? drivers were always plunging into the crosswalks when I had the "walk" man, I was always having to climb bridges or submerge into tunnels to cross streets, and the city?s "super-blocks" are sort of oppressive ? I walk quickly but it took me nearly an hour to walk around the block on which my hotel was located.

I think traffic behavior is dictated by a complicated mix of cultural factors and the traffic engineering measures in place. In Copenhagen, home of the world?s largest anarchist community, people on foot are astonishingly law-abiding in terms of not crossing against the light. In New York, an arguably more individualistic, ego-driven sort of place, you?re viewed as a tourist if you don?t jaywalk. But in London, for example, studies have shown that the number of pedestrians who violate red lights literally changes with each block; it?s not that those people?s culture changed from one block to the next, it was simply that some lights were too punishingly long to wait for.

Q: You seem to feel pretty strongly about what constitutes an "accident" on the road. While drugs and alcohol are called out as criminal, cell phone use, texting and general disregard for traffic laws are not. Do you think we are heading toward stricter laws on this front? Should we?
A: Since the car was invented, drivers have been reluctant to give up what they see as their "rights," even as these supposed rights keep changing. This is why, for example, cars are sold without "speed governors," a device that would greatly reduce, if not eliminate, the illegal ? let?s call it what it is ? act of speeding, and certainly reduce fatalities and injuries. It took years for people to accept that drinking and then getting behind the wheel was not a good idea, and obviously many still do think it?s acceptable. As the science emerges that cell phone conversations, not simply dialing, can seriously impair a driver?s attention and reaction times, the very reasons we criminalize drunken driving, I?m not sure what the distinction is that should be made if a driver kills a pedestrian while drunk versus while on their cell phone, or for that matter who kills a pedestrian because they were driving 25 miles over the speed limit. Does one get years in jail and the other a slap on the wrist? Don?t they both show an equal disregard for the law? People are leery of imposing stricter laws on negligent driving because it?s always been viewed as a "folk crime," like fudging your taxes, sort of widespread and not as serious as others. People are reluctant to criminalize what they see as "normal" behavior. But how did it become normal behavior? When I got my driver?s license, the cell phone hadn?t been invented, and somehow as a society we managed to get along. The economy didn?t collapse, and, if you believe surveys, people were no less happy then they are now. No one wants to get into an accident, they?re certainly not premeditated, but were people doing everything they reasonably could to avoid an "accidental" crash when it later turns out they were talking on a cell phone while driving? It?s something we?re going to have wrestle with as a society as the science really begins to come in.

Q: What is "a forgiving road"?
A: This is a school of thought that says, drivers are only human, they?re going to make mistakes, so let?s build things so that if they do make a mistake, they won?t be seriously injured or killed. Sounds good in theory, and in some places, it?s good practice. If you?re cruising along the highway at 75 mph and your tire blows out, wouldn?t you want a guardrail to prevent you from crashing into a tree? The problem is: Where do you draw the line? The early traffic engineers thought the forgiving road was such a good idea they argued it should be extended to every road in the country. Even residential streets, they argued, shouldn?t be lined with trees, and instead should have massive "clear zones" for people to skid off into without killing themselves. The problem, apart from the fact that forgiving roads don?t really make for nice residential or city environments, is that the forgiving road principles, can, in effect, give permission to drivers to drive more recklessly, which is not good for other drivers, pedestrians, or cyclists ? and often not good for them. Just as the only safe car is the one that never leaves the garage, the only truly safe road is the one that?s never driven. Trying to make roads "too safe" for drivers leads to all sorts of unintended consequences.

Q: You write that "as the inner life of the driver begins to come into focus, it is becoming clear not only that distraction is the single biggest problem on the road, but that we have little concept of just how distracted we are." Can you explain?
A: To give you an idea, I took a test on a driving simulator. I was doing a kind of logic exercise via a hands-free phone while I drove on the highway. I smacked into the back of a truck. When I looked at the software that tracked my eye movements, they were locked onto the back of that truck. Did I realize how distracted I was? Not at all. Think of when you zone out as someone?s talking to you. You?re only made aware of it when they ask if you?re listening to them. Or take the famous "gorilla video" experiment. You?re trying to pay attention to people passing the basketball to each other. In the meantime, a guy in a gorilla suit strolls by. Most people don?t see it. You?re distracted from the gorilla by the act of counting passes, but you?ve no idea. This kind of thing, scarily, happens in driving all the time. There are times we know we?re distracted in some way, like physically dialing a phone, but other times when we?re not aware of the extent of our distraction because we think we?re paying attention.

Q: You write about the cars and technologies of the future and as you put it, "It is probably no accident that whenever one hears of a "smart" technology, it refers to something that has been taken out of human control." Are we headed towards the driverless automobile?
A: We?re definitely already in the era of "driver-assist" automobiles, with blind-spot warnings and adaptive cruise control and the like. As people who study automation have noted, these "semiautomated" processes come with very particular challenges ? drivers may relax their vigilance, thinking everything is fine thanks to the car?s technology, but something might happen that actually confounds the car?s systems, and suddenly the driver is "out of the loop." This kind of thing has been seen in airline crashes. That said, were it to be fully achievable, full automated driving would have all kinds of benefits, from smoother traffic flow to a reduction in crashes. But that?s a ways away ? the legal issues, for one, are massive ? but maybe by 2050, like in the film Minority Report, we?ll all have little autonomous pods connected to a grid?

Q: If you had to choose from the vast array of prescriptions, what would be some of the top things you would recommend to make our roads safer and our traffic less maddening?
A: 1. Pay attention to the task at hand. You are operating heavy machinery, not driving a big phone booth or a make-up mirror. Every glance away from the road, every phone call, every fumbling for your last McNugget, not only disrupts traffic flow, it boosts the risk for a crash, which is itself one of the leading causes of congestion. Even though we often read about how much money we?re losing because of traffic congestion, which people often site as reason to build more roads, it?s been estimated that crashes cost us more in economic terms than congestion itself.
2. Remember the ants. Army ants are among the world?s best commuters, for a single reason: They?re all cooperating. They move in unison, they help each other out, the individual doesn?t consider his own interests above that of the traffic stream. We all want to assert our individuality, or our sense of superiority on the road, but as everyone does that, it makes it worse for everyone else, and the whole system gets worse.
3. Keep in mind you?re not as good a driver as you think you are. On the road, we?re moving faster than our evolutionary history has prepared us. We cope pretty well regardless, but we?re still susceptible to all kinds of flaws and distortions in our sensory and decision-making equipment. Just because your eyes are on the road and your hands upon the wheel doesn?t mean you?re actually prepared to deal with an emergency.
4. We can?t build our way out of traffic, but we can think our way out. Building more roads when they?re already under-funded doesn?t seem workable, and given that most roads are only congested part of the time, it?s not really the most efficient solution anyway, for loads of reasons. As a former Disney engineer told me when I asked why they didn?t just build more rides instead of worrying about new ways to manage the long queues, "you don?t build a church for Easter Sunday." But being able to clear a stalled car quickly because sensors detect the traffic flow has changed, knowing which routes are crowded in that moment, and possibly charging accordingly; or, perhaps, making traffic lights adapt to changing demand ? or getting rid of traffic lights altogether ? there?s countless innovative solutions out there that are more sophisticated, and more sustainable,than simply laying more asphalt, and that don?t necessarily involve not driving ? though that of course is the ultimate traffic solution.

Q: Okay so the big question. We know you have learned a lot about traffic but what have you learned about we humans behind the wheels?
A: In a word, that we?re ?human! We make mistakes, we misjudge our abilities, we?re not as aware of what?s happening in traffic as we think we are, we act differently in different situations, we get angry over things that matter little in the long run, we?re susceptible to distortions in our sense of time, we have trouble living beyond the moment, of seeing the big picture ? oh, and also, that everyone has a different opinion on who the worst drivers are and where they live?"Los Angeles! L.A. drivers are the worst? No, Atlanta has terrible drivers? No way, Boston drivers are nuts?" Try this with your friends sometime.

Would you be surprised that road rage can be good for society? Or that most crashes happen on sunny, dry days? That our minds can trick us into thinking the next lane is moving faster? Or that you can gauge a nation’s driving behavior by its levels of corruption? These are only a few of the remarkable dynamics that Tom Vanderbilt explores in this fascinating tour through the mysteries of the road.

Based on exhaustive research and interviews with driving experts and traffic officials around the globe, Traffic gets under the hood of the everyday activity of driving to uncover the surprisingly complex web of physical, psychological, and technical factors that explain how traffic works, why we drive the way we do, and what our driving says about us. Vanderbilt examines the perceptual limits and cognitive underpinnings that make us worse drivers than we think we are. He demonstrates why plans to protect pedestrians from cars often lead to more accidents. He shows how roundabouts, which can feel dangerous and chaotic, actually make roads safer—and reduce traffic in the bargain. He uncovers who is more likely to honk at whom, and why. He explains why traffic jams form, outlines the unintended consequences of our quest for safety, and even identifies the most common mistake drivers make in parking lots.

The car has long been a central part of American life; whether we see it as a symbol of freedom or a symptom of sprawl, we define ourselves by what and how we drive. As Vanderbilt shows, driving is a provocatively revealing prism for examining how our minds work and the ways in which we interact with one another. Ultimately, Traffic is about more than driving: it’s about human nature. This book will change the way we see ourselves and the world around us. And who knows? It may even make us better drivers.

Customer Reviews:

• Too much of a good thing...
  I ordered Traffic with great anticipation because I am interested in cars and their impact on our society. I also enjoy books that highlight the sociological and/or psychological impact of technology. So this book seemed to be a winner.
  
  I was wrong.
  
  The book begins with a very interesting preface that explains how we drive and the way our personalities affect the way we interact with other motorists on the road. Vanderbilt uses the "later merger" as stepping stone to the book promising that this simple act of merging into traffic will help us understand who we are.
  
  The next several chapters expand on this "late merger" by providing a plethora of data from studies and experiments. Vanderbilt leaves no stone unturned as he consults dozens of experts who each a have a catchy little name for their particlaur syndrome. My favorite was the "Starbucks syndrome" for those people stop at Starbucks on their way to somewhere else.
  
  Riveting.
  
  The book suffers from a lack of editing. A good editor could have removed the redundancies and wanderings that Vanderbilt takes us on. I almost felt like a tourist being taken on an extra long taxi ride from the airport just to increase the fare.
  
  This is a great bargain table book. Don't pay more than five bucks and you'll have an interesting book.
  ...more info
• Vanderbilt
  This is a quick read that engenders a number of interesting "a-ha" moments. Vanderbilt explains why traffic happens, what days have the most accidents (after the time change from standard to daylight time), how late merging really is the optimal solution for everyone, who causes the most accidents (students - followed in close second by doctors!) and how timed entrances into the highway really do work (using an example of rice being poured into a narrow beaker he explains that rice will enter the beaker faster if it is poured in gradually rather than dumping it all in at the same time). The book isn't packed with statistics and focuses more on ideas and anecdotes. An enjoyable read!...more info
• the perils of driving
  I was really hoping that this book would answer such questions as why so many people don't use their turn signals or insist on driving below the speed limit in the left lane. I was disappointed in that, but did learn other interesting things, like why you drive on the right in some countries, and in the left in others. Also discussed is why people drive more safely when there are fewer traffic signs and other warning devices than when there are more. It turns out that people drive more cautiously when they don't know what to expect than when they do. Similarly, people drive more safely when the car has fewer safety devices. Unfortunately, Vanderbilt spends the bulk of the book on this point and much less on the question that his title indicated he would be answering....more info
• A great topic but a little dry
  Vanderbilt does a great job of bringing to light a lot of interesting quirks in how we drive. Unfortunately his still of prose is a little too much like a manual so sometimes what should be fascinating becomes mildly interesting.
  
  Overall a very good read but if you read it at night it might take longer....more info
• Changed the way I approach my time behind the wheel
  I live in Los Angeles, and my daily commute subjects me to this city's infamous traffic. So why in the world would I want to read a book about traffic? After all, I live it every day. Well, whether you live in a crowded city or a small town off the interstate, Traffic turns out to be an interesting, worthwhile look at humans and their machines, what happens on the road, and why.
  
  Traffic hooked me right off the bat with its provocative starting point: you're on the freeway in the right hand lane. A sign indicates that the lane is ending and you should merge left. Do you merge at the first safe opportunity and get mad at the drivers who keep zooming past on the right until the last possible merge point? Or are you one of the drivers who waits until that endpoint, where you have to stop and wait for your turn to merge? Tom Vanderbilt used to be an early merger, but then he changed his ways. Once you read the facts behind his decision, maybe you'll change your ways too.
  
  Vanderbilt explores this and other conventional wisdom of the road. He also looks at traffic from an engineering point of view. For instance, how much good do all those speed limit, caution and warning signs actually do? What would happen in a busy, urban environment if we just took those signs away and let people figure things out for themselves? (It's been tried and the results surprised me.) Have we collectively done the right thing by widening our roads, adding bike lanes, crosswalks and protected turn arrows?
  
  By the time I reached the end of this book, I had plenty of food for thought. It's quite possible that all the traffic planning and road engineering in our major cities has been misguided in some major ways, resulting in the disruption of neighborhoods and increased danger to driver and pedestrian alike. How do we make traffic flow more quickly on our crowded roads - or is "faster" the wrong goal in the first place?
  
  Although Traffic may leave the reader with more questions than answers, fascinating studies and tidbits are scattered throughout the book, and Vanderbilt writes in an easygoing, humorous style. If he occasionally dwells too long on a particular point (I found some of his writing about safety a little plodding), he can be forgiven this minor sin in a book otherwise packed with information that speaks to our everyday lives.
  
  One final note: although it was not the author's intent, reading Traffic actually had an impact on the way I drive. I had become an angry driver, and after reading this book, I find myself much more philosophical behind the wheel, and I've cut way back on the pointless aggression. I will try and make that a lasting change....more info
• Fascinating and entertainging - a thoroughly readable book.
  I found this book to be a page-turner -- and an absolute necessity for every driver and anyone who has ever been a white-knuckled passenger in someone else's car.
  
  The book is easy to read and well-written. The author's many humorous asides keep the pace moving, as do the fascinating nuggets of information he gives. I found answers to many questions I had, and some I didn't even know to ask. Read this book! ...more info
• Good Book
  This book is a good read. It is well written, funny and full of useful information and good tips. Well worth reading. ...more info
• Well researched, but lacking a big picture
  If you're really interested in driving and traffic, then you will likely enjoy reading this book. I thought that I would be interested in reading about driving and traffic, but it turns out that I wasn't.
  The author did everything right: he did a lot of research on traffic, organized his findings and wrote it up clearly. However, it never really works as a full-length book. Like half of all non-fiction books written today, it probably would have worked better as a magazine article.
  There are two main problems with the book. First, it contains a lot of information in several sections, all of which are dense and well-researched, and some of which are more interesting than others (I liked the sections on controlling congestion and the unexpected effects of increasing safety features; I didn't care for the parts on people overestimating their driving skills and people eyes and ears betraying them on the road). But with all of this information, there is no overarching theme or story. There is nothing that the author is trying to say that you can summarize in a few sentences or a few paragraphs. He's just listing a bunch of stories about driving and traffic. Hence, it doesn't come together as a book.
  Second, it seems in multiple places that the author doesn't really understand some of the more technical material that he is writing about. Granted, he is not a traffic scientist, but he is writing a book about traffic science, so he should be somewhat of an expert. He has the habit of putting quote marks around scientific phrases or concepts as an excuse for not defining or describing them. Some of these he shouldn't have trouble with; I think that we should all know what a percentile is! Though I may be misreading several of his sentences, a number of times I was struck by the impression that he doesn't really understand the difference between absolute numbers and percentages. For example, more pedestrians are killed at marked crosswalks than jaywalking. But more pedestrians take marked crosswalks than jaywalk. What matters is the rate at which pedestrians are killed in each of those situations. I am not sure that he really gets that. He certainly didn't explain it clearly if he does, several times.
  In short, this book is filled with interesting stuff, but it isn't interesting as a whole. I would suggest just reading a few chapters to see if you like it. Have low expectations, and you might enjoy it more than I did....more info
• Says as much about us as drivers, individuals and groups as it does about traffic
  As the subtitle of the book indicates, Tom Vanderbilt's well-researched book says as much about us as drivers, individuals and groups as it does about the phenomenon and mechanics of traffic itself.
  
  The over-used term "thought leadership" applies here in a very real way. Vanderbilt has tapped into incisive opinion-makers and researchers over a surprisingly large collection of disciplines. He skillfully weaves in expert opinions in sociology, biology, economics, mathematics, engineering, politics, business and other disciplines to lay out the conundrums and contradictions of congestion. As he quotes a GM engineer - of all the problems the car industry faces (energy, safety, business model, congestion), the most intractable one is congestion. The internal combustion engine could be rendered obsolete tomorrow, and congestion probably gets worse.
  
  I listened to the audio version of this book. Dan Slavin does a good job communicating Vanderbilt's passion for his subject. He also brings out much of the book's playful, subtle humor....more info
• Probably nothing you don't already know; at times very dry; anti-American bias
  Calling Americans as a group "gun-crazy" is sort of like calling us "free-speech crazy," except that author Tom Vanderbilt never acuses our interest in preserving our First Amendment as being responsible for deaths (12--fewer than, he notes, are killed annually in America by lightning) on the road.
  
  But perhaps Volvo drivers (TWICE pointed out that the author is) just have an unnatural fear of guns.
  
  The point of his book: Everyone tends to overestimate our driving and love-making skills. We all want more people (but not us) to use public transportation. Building more roads just encourages more people to use them. And few people really have basic driving skills, having received instruction as teenagers in how to get a driver's license--not necessarily in how to be a good driver.
  
  The book is generally dry and spends an inordinate amount of time talking about the diets of crickets and the commute patterns on ants. Its saving grace--also a flaw of generalization--is that instead of quoting numbers exclusively, somewhat-vague phrases such as "Even people who do not own a car are more likely to commute via car than public transit." ...more info
• Interminably prolix
  Two stars only because it's a book on an important, and to me an interesting, subject. Otherwise, I'd give it only one star. It's just too wordy! The author makes his points in a drip-drip-drip style akin to the Chinese water torture. To the author: Please!! -- in the next edition reduce the over 350 pages to maybe about 50.
  ...more info
• You are not as good a driver as you think you ae
  A fascinating and eye-opening look at the reasons behind the ways we drive. You may not be as good a driver as you think you are, and this book will tell you why. Written in an entertaining style, but with full documentation and endnotes for those who need more...more info
• Traffic & Motorcycles
  I just got Traffic and my first motorcycle within a week of each other. It's amazing how both have given me a different perspective on driving in a car.
  
  I already knew that walking and driving in the city were different, but Tom's book really crystallized how much of this was due to the impersonal cocoon a car provides.
  
  The section that compares how quickly convertible drivers start honking at a stalled car vs. non-convertible drivers was great. Riding my motorcycle, I really do feel more like a bicycle rider than a car driver.
  
  Great book all the way around. I really can't believe nobody wrote this before now!...more info
• When a road is once built, it is a strange thing how it collects traffic - Robert Louis Stevenson
  A wonderful book confirming all the suspicions we have had for years:
  
  'The things that work best in the traffic world of the highway - consistency, uniformity, wide lanes, knowing what to expect ahead of time, the reduction of conflicts, the restriction of access, and the removal of obstacles - have little or no place in the social world.'
  
  Tom Vanderbilt explains in a sensible and humourous language why traffic is so bad for us and what we can do about it.
  
  The book is based on several investigations and sources supporting the view that driving can be improved with a little sense both from drivers but certainly also from politicians. Especially the chapter about roadbuilding leading to more traffic ought to be obligatory reading for any politician who may wish to build a highway or a bridge in order to improve traffic.
  The Fatal Flaws of Traffic Engineering is yet another chapter recommendable to the men and women in charge of traffic.
  
  The book also informs us about the main charactheristic of the ordinary driver: Selfishness. Actually, it is proven that if another driver is waiting to get your parking space you will be slower to leave it! Besides, about 80% of all drivers find that their driving is above average! According to the book as well as the references therein the driver personality is partly based on self deception thus providing good explanation for our embarrasing high numbers of accidents.
  
  Vanderbilt also mentions the impact on house prices, health and environment and suggest more methods to reduce traffic.
  
  Perhaps one should send it to the Government for Christmas....more info
• The "Enemy" Is Us
  
  
  I ordered this book, as I expect many will, because I wanted to understand the causes of my most frustrating driving experiences. Why it is that any lane I choose to drive in always seems to move the most slowly? When I'm driving quickly along a multi-lane highway, I suddenly encounter enormous traffic congestion and crawl along in bumper-to-bumper traffic for a half hour. Suddenly, all the cars begin to speed up again, and I never encounter any evidence of something that might have caused the slow down in the first place. Why is that? When I see the sign, "Construction ahead, merge right," I merge right. I am then passed by countless speeding cars in the left lane, and drivers who wait until the last possible second before forcing themselves into my lane. Why are these speeding transgressors never punished?
  Indeed, "Traffic" answered many questions such as these, but ultimately, it accomplishes so much more. It presents itself for a must read for any thinking driver. In spots, it can be a difficult read, and one occasionally wishes that the author had been less thorough in the presentation of his extensive research. (The 90 or so pages of notes referenced in several reviews is, I think, an effort on the part of the author and editors to make the core book more readable while providing additional information for those who want to pursue it.) By and large it's quite readable, even at the beach!
  I learned a great deal about highway engineering in this book, but I then learned that better engineering is not necessarily a solution and might, indeed indirectly contribute to the problem. What "Traffic" points out is that we, as drivers, do a great deal to negate the best efforts of traffic engineers. The author observes that, ironically, because we perceive one highway to be inherently safer than another, we drive on that highway in a manner that makes it less safe. We assume that the "safe highway" will automatically make us safer. To some extent, we can blame the highway engineers, but the reality, the author tells us quite compellingly, is that the enemy is us. Because we drive as individuals, each in his/her own metal box, any "systems analysis" of traffic flow becomes almost impossible, as we don't all play by the same rules. Furthermore, the author's research reveals that each of us considers himself/herself to be a very good driver; it's all those other idiots who are creating the problems. Hopefully, to read this book will cause one to think differently as a driver.
  Toward the end of the book, the author compares the number of people dying annually in traffic accidents with the number who were killed on 9/11. It shouldn't be surprising to learn that the number of people dying on our highways annually dwarfs the number who died in that terrorist attack. Yet, the author points out, most Americans have willingly accepted the inconveniences and loss of personal freedoms that have been imposed on us by the Department of Homeland Security. At the same time, we strenuously resist any changes in driving regulations that impinge on those personal freedoms--and willingly continue to accept highway death rates that are utterly absurd.
  I learned a great deal about traffic as I read this book, but, primarily I learned a much more about myself as a driver. "Traffic" provides many thoughtful observations and suggestions to think about, but, more importantly, to act on. In this particular context, "Traffic" is a very important book.
  ...more info
• You Have to Read This Book!
  You have to read this book. In fact anyone who gets behind the wheel of a car should be required to read this book!
  
  It not only is a fascinating study of the workings of traffic and driving, but on the human mind and how it works. I'm only a ? of the way through and I'm already recommending it!
  
  You'll never look at driving the same way, but at the same time, it really gives us lattitude on being human and what that means (although we could stand to be less human behind the wheel). The writer has a nice chatty style and communicates this stuff really well.
  
  ...more info
• it won't make you a safer driver
  Lots of good trivia here but it doesn't feel like there was anything actionable.
  
  It's disturbing to read two different books that take the same psychological experiment (having a person in a gorilla suit walk through a group that is passing a basketball) and use it to illustrate two different points. It starts to make me wonder about what we can conclude, when the books cover widely differing subjects.
  
  The premise is interesting, but we're repeatedly given many teasers (early or late merge?) and one answer. In the end, it's easier to remember the question than the answer.
  
  Also, most of the statistics involve fatal crashes. I'd like to think that there is other safety data available. Wearing a helmet could save my life, but it doesn't help me avoid a fender bender in the supermarket lot. There was a lot of research involved in this book; about 1/4 of it is citations, swelling its size without adding reading.
  
  There are some good nuggets of information though, like building roads creates more traffic, and removing dangers from the roadside leading to more fatalities....more info
• Facinating tour? Hardly...
  I thought this book might be enlightening about why we drive the way we do. This was the dullest 6 hours of book on CD I have ever listened to. Putting the words "fascinating" and "provocatively" on the jacket is really a stretch. ...more info
• An excellent multi-disciplinary approach to an untouched subject
  Traffic is a wonderful, cross disciplinary study of something we encounter every day, but put very little thought or effort into. We all deal with traffic of some sort, whether we live in a big city or the most rural area, there are always other cars on the road.
  
  I especially enjoyed his investigation of the risks of driving - how for most, it's the most dangerous act we undertake, but we never hear of people too afraid to drive. It's safer to live in the middle of a dangerous neighborhood and dry your hair next to a full sink than it is to drive through the suburbs on a daily basis. That's hard to believe, but makes sense when one thinks further about it. Traffic is just so automatic for Americans that we completely discount any risks.
  
  If you want an in depth, researched basic knowledge of driving, the history of city design, and why we do what we do while in the car, grab this book. It's engrossing, in depth, yet short enough to finish in a day or two....more info
• compliment to author
  Though at times it felt like I was drowning in statistics, this book was a worthwhile read. I compliment the author for his effort on a difficult subject, and particularly applaud his phenomenal footnotes- almost 30 pages of studies, explanations, and interpretations. I photocopied them so I can look up some of the studies he points to....more info
• An interesting, but flawed traffic tome
  I picked up _Traffic_ after hearing the author's interview on a local radio show. The book does, and does not live up to its premise. As others have noted -- the style can be difficult. Factoids compete with each other for the reader's attention. Overall themes, such as the peverseness of human behavior as it affects risk-assessment and response; that making things safer can make people take greater risks; that cell phone use while driving is bad; etc., are examined from several angles, then flogged until those horses are quite dead.
  There's a nifty section on a less-is-more school of road design and signage that would have strongly benefited from some photographs, rather than the author attempting to describe the street design and flow.
  The author talks a bit about attention-blindness (referring to the famous "Gorrillas in our Midst" study), and about the malleability of memory and perception, but doesn't seem to draw the thoughts together. Those interested in a more academic approach to this topic might want to try Dewar and Olson's _Human Factors in Traffic Safety_ (2007).
  Others have already commented on the editorial choice to use endnotes instead of footnotes, and they are right. The book comes to an end rather abruptly, with the reader left to face about 100 pages of endnotes, which can be hard to relate to their text.
  All in all, it is an informative read, but could have been stronger with a bit more editing....more info
• fitting topic for drive-time listening
  There is rarely an audio CD that is as suitable a companion for commuting as this one. How appropriate to contemplate the arguments for and against the "late merge" that while sitting in just that situation as the cars on the left flew by up to the merge point? Thanks to Mr. Vanderbilt for giving me permission to do that myself.
  
  To those of you who saw the reviews that the book is too long, consider the audio CD, which is abridged. The five CDs are a reasonable length, although even that drags here and there, so I can imagine some pruning from the printed text was not harmful.
  
  The book is a collection of fairly serious technical topics for the layman, basic feature essays, human interest stories, and others that form a mixed bag. There is no real non-fiction theme other than perhaps traffic and parking are more complex than you might have thought, and that human psychology is easily the hardest issue to deal with.
  
  The comparison to Freakonomics, which I listened to right before this, is somewhat apt in the analysis of some off-beat or counter-intuitive phenomena and statistics, most of which should have some appeal to almost any driver and parker, which of course is almost everybody.
  
  One of the weaker subjects was the debate about whether building more roads causes more traffic. The topic is usually politicized and Vanderbilt adds little to the subject, as it has no real provable answer anyway.
  
  The narrator's presentation was pleasant and went down easy. ...more info