Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do and What It Says About Us
Tom Vanderbilt
Top 10 Best Quotes
“The way humans hunt for parking and the way animals hunt for food are not as different as you might think.”
“Men may or may not be better drivers than women, but they seem to die more often trying to prove that they are.”
“Human attention, in the best of circumstances, is a fluid but fragile entity. Beyond a certain threshold, the more that is asked of it, the less well it performs. When this happens in a psychological experiment, it is interesting. When it happens in traffic, it can be fatal.”
“It's probably no accident that whenever one hears of a smart technology, it refers to something that has been taken out of human control.”
“As Harvard University psychologist Daniel Gilbert argues, 'You can't adapt to commuting, because it's entirely unpredictable. Driving in traffic is a different kind of hell every day.'”
“When a situation feels dangerous to you, it's probably more safe than you know; when a situation feels safe, that is precisely when you should feel on guard.”
“There is a simple mantra you can carry about you in traffic: When a situation feels dangerous to you, it's probably more safe than you know; when a situation feels safe, that is precisely when you should feel on guard. Most crashes, after all, happen on dry roads, on clear, sunny days, to sober drivers.”
“The road, more than simply a system of regulations and designs, is a place where many millions of us, with only loose parameters for how to behave, are thrown together daily in a kind of massive petri dish in which all kinds of uncharted, little-understood dynamics are at work. There is no other place where so many people from different walks of life--different ages, races, classes, religions, genders, political preferences, lifestyle choices, levels of psychological stability--mingle so freely.”
“'Can you imagine, 30 years ago, saying nobody will make coffee at home?' Nancy McGuckin, a travel researcher in Washington, D.C.”
“Traffic was as much an emotional problem as it was a mechanical one.”
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Book Keywords:
aggression, gender, hunting, cars, anxiety, roads, perspective, hell, commuting, stress, parking, driving