Traffic
Subtitle: why we drive the way we do (and what it says about us)
By: Tom Vanderbilt
Publisher: Allen Lane; Penguin
Published: 2008
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 402
ISBN-13: 9780713999310; 9780713999327
Subjects: Automobile driving; Psychological aspects; Traffic congestion
Description: Driving is a fact of life. We are all spending more and more time on the road, and traffic is an issue we face everyday. This audiobook will make you think about it in a whole new light. We have always had a passion for cars and driving. Now Traffic offers us an exceptionally rich understanding of that passion. Vanderbilt explains why traffic jams form, outlines the unintended consequences of our attempts to engineer safety and even identifies the most common mistakes drivers make in parking lots. Based on exhaustive research and interviews with driving experts and traffic officials around the globe, Traffic gets under the hood of the quotidian activity of driving to uncover the surprisingly complex web of physical, psychological and technical factors that explain how traffic works. -- Publisher details.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Prologue: Why I Became a Late Merger (and Why You Should Too); title: Ch. 1. Why Does the Other Lane Always Seem Faster? How Traffic Messes with Our Heads; title: Ch. 2. Why Youre Not as Good a Driver as You Think You Are; title: Ch. 3. How Our Eyes and Minds Betray Us on the Road; title: Ch. 4. Why Ants Dont Get into Traffic Jams (and Humans Do): On Cooperation as a Cure for Congestion; title: Ch. 5. Why Women Cause More Congestion Than Men (and Other Secrets of Traffic); title: Ch. 6. Why More Roads Lead to More Traffic (and What to Do About It); title: Ch. 7. When Dangerous Roads Are Safer; title: Ch. 8. How Traffic Explains the World: On Driving with a Local Accent; title: Ch. 9. Why You Shouldnt Drive with a Beer-Drinking Divorced Doctor Named Fred on Super Bowl Sunday in a Pickup Truck in Rural Montana: Whats Risky on the Road and Why; title: Epilogue: Driving Lessons.