Hurtling Through Space in a Metal Box

Bellingham resident Bob Keller, a former truck driver, at age 74 has owned five cars in his lifetime.

Alfred A. Knopf (Borzoi Book), 2008
402 pages, hardcover, $24.95
ISBN 978-0-307-26478-7

Unless we are hospitalized or mortified (dead), none us can escape traffic. Walking, jogging, biking, skating, busing, motorcycling or driving a car we find ourselves immersed in a mass of other people busily going and coming.

Traveling east past Lowe’s and the Sunset Mall we run into construction constipation just beyond Orleans Street. We grumble while following a 20 mph vehicle poking along south on the Boulevard. When taking the roundabout at Cordata and Kellogg, many of us still cringe. We encounter tense and dangerous situations every day, putting our lives at risk — and seldom think twice about it. Traffic seems as normal as brushing one’s teeth or mowing the lawn.

Not so, and Tom Vanderbilt has written a revealing, provocative book to explain why. Some books not only change how we see the world, they actually seem to change the world itself. After reading John Allen’s “Cataclysms on the Columbia,” eastern Washington changed forever. Michael Pollan’s “Omnivore’s Dilemma” transforms what one experiences in a grocery store or supermarket, not to mention driving across Nebraska and Iowa. Vanderbilt’s “Traffic” now joins this select company of world-altering books.

Vanderbilt, a young scholar who contributes to The Wall Street Journal, Slate, The New York Times, Wired and Popular Science, has taken a universal human activity that each of us, whether pedestrian, cyclist, rickshaw driver or trucker experiences daily. Driving is so common and habitual that we hardly know we are doing it or what the constant dangers are.

For example, driving 70 mph south on I-5 we experience little sense of speed or motion because other vehicles are moving only five or ten mph faster or slower than we are. But glance at the pavement just below the hood or out your side window — that’s how rapidly you are hurtling through space in a metal box.

The “automatic” and “natural” act of driving an automobile is actually one of the most complicated, complex and unnatural things we do. Vanderbilt seeks to demonstrate how roads, signals, signs, brakes, lanes, speed limits and lights ultimately matter less than human nature and human cultures.

The psychology of risk-taking, fear and attention explains more than do traffic laws and engine horsepower. To use his favorite example, the most effective safety device for any car would be a dagger mounted on the steering wheel aimed at the driver’s chest.

For cultural bias in our highway engineering, consider the technical language describing walkers: “vulnerable road-users,” “pedestrian impedance” and “pedestrian interference [with the] saturation flow rate” of cars through intersections. Or in comparing cultures, consider Vanderbilt’s quotation (p. 220) from the British playwright Kenneth Tynan:

“Bad driving — i.e. fast and reckless driving — tends to exist in

inverse ratio to democratic institutions. In an authoritarian

state, the only place where the little man achieves equality with

the big is in heavy traffic. Only there can he actually overtake.”

Returning to American culture: 200 passengers dying in a plane crash, or even an airliner landing on the Hudson River, dominates front-page headlines for days, but we hardly notice a similar two-day national death toll on our highways. Or consider more psychology: “There are two things,” says champion racer Sterling Moss, “no man will admit he cannot do well: drive and make love.” (p. 57)

Vanderbilt enjoys dilemmas and paradoxes. Here are a few:

• Crossing railroad tracks with a restricted view is safer than crossing tracks open in both directions.

• We tend to tailgate SUVs more than smaller cars.

• New automobiles are more dangerous than old ones.

• Children walking to school are safer than those riding in cars.

• People who think they are the best drivers are often the worst.

• Jaywalking is safer than using a crosswalk.

• Large objects appear to move more slowly than small ones.

• Road rage is beneficial.

• Slower is faster.

• Most crashes (not “accidents,” please) happen during sunny days on dry pavement to sober drivers.

• Attempting to make walking safer may increase the danger.

• Women cause more congestion but are safer drivers than men.

• Busy ants don’t have gridlock or traffic jams.

• Dangerous roads are better than safe roads.

In addition to his paradoxes, Vanderbilt poses a host of questions. Why do car ads feature reckless driving? Why don’t we see objects clearly in our line of vision? Why is parking dangerous? What is the most frequent type of fatal crash? How do police set up a “speed trap?” Why does building more roads create more traffic and congestion? How does tinted glass affect our attitudes? What is the psychology of “attention” and “distraction?” What is the most frequent error in parking? Why are solo drivers more dangerous than those with a passenger?

The book contains an avalanche of answers. I will repeat only a few here. You are more likely to die between midnight and 3 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday than during all the rest of the weekend. Your odds of dying on a motorcycle are 22 times as great as in an automobile or truck, and you are more likely to die in a pickup than in a compact car.

We spend 32 hours a year waiting in traffic, and about eight 40-hour weeks commuting to work. Important areas that Vanderbilt decided not to explore are environmental impacts of traffic, a topic he considered already sufficiently obvious.

When I retired from Western, my “last lecture” was about automobiles, roads and traffic. I had hoped to write a book on the subject but lacked sufficient discipline and energy to tackle such an immense, complex human activity. Tom Vanderbilt, possessing both the energy and discipline, has now done it for me.

The Bellingham and Whatcom County libraries have seven copies of this book and two copies of the audiobook. §