PSYCHOLOGY: Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do (And What It Says About Us)By Tom Vanderbilt Allen Lane, 402pp, £20
DID YOU KNOW that the Red Guards during China's Cultural Revolution wanted to change the meaning of traffic lights (red to go, green to stop)? And, closer to home did you know that people who drive and speak on the mobile phone, unwittingly lock their eyes ahead, often on some random spot which is dangerous to driving?
Or that our traffic problems are not even new, for archaeologists have found evidence that in the city of Pompeii people had to deal with construction detours and one-way streets. The traffic problems of the Romans even caused Caesar to ban carts and chariots except for essential services like carrying construction materials for the temples of the Gods. These are just a few of very many interesting facts that emerge from Tom Vanderbilt's book.
Driving has become so commonplace now that we forget what a complex, sophisticated activity it really is. As we make our way through traffic, calculating risk factors, cursing the bullying SUV or slow driver, chancing amber lights, we are only brought up short by near-misses in which we could have lost our lives. Only at such times are we aware of the real danger inherent in driving.
With the modern reorganisation of our cities most of us no longer even walk to work or to the shops but instead drive considerable distances for these activities.
This, as we know, has contributed to traffic jams which have led to new roads being built which in turn leads to more traffic. The received wisdom that "function leads structure", that we drive cars to get somewhere and build roads to take us there becomes reversed into "structure leads function".
Because a new road is built to ease traffic on another, older road, there is now an extra road offering alternative opportunities for travel, that is - more traffic. Nor is this tendency confined to cars.
Interestingly, in Copenhagen, where they favoured bicycles over cars by quietly cutting parking and increasing cycle lanes, they found that: "Cycle traffic was now so extensive that congestion on certain cycle tracks has become a problem". This points up an important part of Vanderbilt's argument - it's not just about cars, it's human psychology.
Those aspects of driving of which we are not conscious take up a large part of this book. One psychological experiment is instructive - the so-called Gorilla Effect, in which a video is shown of a circle of basketball players passing a ball to each other. The subjects were asked to count the number of passes. What half of the subjects failed to notice was that during the video a person wearing a gorilla suit had passed through the group. This "inattentional blindness" is blamed for the frequent collision of cars with motorbikes ("Sorry mate, I didn't see you") and it may also help explain the many collisions with emergency vehicles with blue flashing lights on highways.
These danger lights can themselves cause accidents for they exert an attraction on drivers who, tending to steer where they look, bring about a moth-flame effect. Also, rubbernecking (staring at accidents) causes even more crashes, especially when observers try to take pictures with their mobile phones ("digi-necking").
The author, indefatigable in his efforts to understand traffic, even makes an excursion into insect life for, he thinks, we might envy ant colonies their apparent organisation. For example, huge, miles-long, migratory bands of flightless crickets, described as a "black carpet unrolling across the desert" at first sight look like a model for us. However research shows these "co-operating" insects are driven by cannibalism, for one of the cricket's best sources of protein and salt is . . . its neighbour. The author concludes: "So whatever the risk of being eaten by one's neighbour, no matter how stressful and unpleasant the experience, it's still a better option than going solo". Humans and insects, he concludes, prefer the risk of travelling in large groups.
Traffic itself is like an organism, it is a system - an extra-human system - or structure with its own laws into which the individual motorist is drawn. When we are drawn into the flow it seems that being inside a car-container with independent mobility and isolated from others within traffic serves to increase our narcissism. This in turn diminishes our sense of responsibility which could explain why many mild-mannered people are, behind the wheel, quite demonic drivers. Just getting into a car and entering into traffic, it would seem, changes our mindset and causes us to function in a new way.
The old wisdom in traffic problems led the way in segregating traffic and pedestrians. But its flaws have often been pointed out.
For example by Charles Dickens who noted that pedestrians would rather risk the traffic than climb up to the bridges to cross the road. Vanderbilt points to Dutch experiments with traffic calming which led to the introduction of woonerven or "living yards" which blur the distinction between pedestrians and drivers.
In this more village-like setting drivers were more careful, more responsible, and the accident rate dropped dramatically. The author further cites the work of Hans Monderman, a Dutch traffic expert who was asked to calm traffic in crowded urban areas. Monderman narrowed the main road in the village of Oudehaske to six metres and blended car, bike and pedestrians so that all three had to look out for and look after each other. He writes: "Each user of a house knows that a kitchen is used differently from the bathroom", so why not make the difference between a village road and the rural highway just as clear?
The writing style is popular, peppered as it is (mercifully) with anecdote rather than statistic but for the specialist there are almost 100 pages of notes out of a total of 400. For this reviewer the main problem with the book is its frenetic pace: no sooner have we been introduced to one or other interesting idea than the author flies on to the next example, anecdote or statistic.
This results in very many interesting but unconnected observations about traffic and drivers, most of which point to the psychology of the driver or the extra-human nature of traffic systems. As the author remarked in an earlier interview with this paper: "The traffic environment is both too human and not human enough".
Ross Skelton is senior lecturer in philosophy and psychoanalysis at Trinity College. He has recently edited The Edinburgh International Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis, published by Edinburgh University Press