Traffic Read Online Free PDF Page A

worst of both worlds, buffeted by speeding cars whose drivers resent my superior health and fuel economy, and hounded by oblivious pedestrians who seem to think it’s safe to cross against the light if “only a bike” is coming but are then startled and indignant as I whisk past at twenty-five miles per hour.
    I am guessing this sort of thing happens to you as well. Let us call it a “modal bias.” Some of this has to do with our skewed perceptual senses, as I will discuss in Chapter 3. Some of it has to do with territoriality, like when bicyclists and pedestrians sharing a path yell at each other or someone pushing a triplet-sized stroller turns into the pedestrian version of the SUV, commandeering the sidewalk through sheer size. But something deeper and more transformative happens when we move from people who walk to people who drive. The “personal armor” described by Disney is perhaps not so far-fetched. One study of pedestrian fatalities by French researchers showed that a significant number were associated with a “change of mode”—for example, moving from car to foot—as if, the authors speculated, drivers leaving their vehicles still felt a certain invulnerability.
    Psychologists have struggled to understand the “deviant driver,” creating detailed personality profiles to understand who’s likely to fall prey to “road rage.” An early mantra, originally applied to what was called the “accident-prone driver,” has long held sway: “A man drives as he lives.” This is why car insurance premiums are tied not only to driving history but, more controversially, to credit scores; risky credit, the thinking goes, correlates with taking risks on the road. The statistical association between lower credit scores and higher insurance losses is just that, however; the reasons why how one lives might be linked to how one drives are less clear. And as inquiries into this question typically involve questionnaires, they’re open to various self-reported response biases. How would
you
answer this sample question: Are you a raving psychopath on wheels? (Please check “never,” “sometimes,” or “always.”) Generally, these inquiries come to what hardly seem earth-shattering conclusions: that “sensation-seeking,” “risk-seeking,” “novelty-seeking,” and “aggressive” individuals tend to drive in a riskier, more aggressive manner. You weren’t going to bet your paycheck on daredevil drivers being the risk-averse people who crave quiet normalcy and routine, were you?
    Even using a phrase like “road rage” lends a clinical legitimacy to what might simply be termed bad or boorish behavior elsewhere. “Traffic tantrums” is a useful alternative, nicely underscoring the raw childishness of aggressive driving. The more interesting question is not whether some of us are more prone to act like homicidal maniacs once we get behind the wheel but why we
all
act differently. What is going on seems to have less to do with a change in personality than with a change in our entire being. In traffic, we struggle to stay human.
    Think of language, perhaps the defining human characteristic. Being in a car renders us mostly mute. Instead of complex vocabularies and subtle shifts in facial expression, the language of traffic is reduced—necessarily, for reasons of safety and economy—to a range of basic signals, formal and informal, that convey only the simplest of meanings. Studies have shown that many of these signals, particularly informal ones, are often misunderstood, especially by novice drivers. To take one example, the Reverend David Rowe, who heads a congregation in the wealthy Connecticut suburb of Fairfield and, improbably, is a great fan of the neopunk band Green Day, told me he was once driving down the road when he spotted a car with a Green Day bumper sticker. He honked to show his solidarity. For his efforts he was rewarded with a finger.
    Even formal signals are sometimes hazy: Is that