Coleman's Reviews > Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do and What It Says About Us

I am glad I read this book (or more accurately, listened to it while sitting in traffic, which was indeed a strange, almost out-of-body experience as the reader called out mistakes and assumptions I make as a driver while I was making them. I highly recommend reading the book this way). Despite the large amount of freedom riders driving across the seemingly empty pages of this great nation, Vanderbilt indicates that many a driver is a stranger to himself, acting and reacting in ways that may seem normal or safe, but actually cause the ills and congestion of traffic. And every mother's son, (including John Barleycorn), is a victim of traffic.

The book is filled to the brim with interesting statistics and factoids, so let me just provide a smattering of the ideas that I found most interesting:

-Parking spots are too cheap and too plentiful in U.S. cities, and thus encouraging more people to drive instead of walking or biking or using transit, causing more traffic.
-As cities expand outward into suburbs, public transit has trouble reaching people, thus causing people to drive more often, thus causing fewer people to use public transit, thus driving up public transit prices, thus causing even fewer people to use public transit, thus causing more traffic.
-Bicyclists are actually safer riding on the street than on the sidewalk, even though sidewalks feel safer.
-Men are almost twice as likely to get into fatal car crashes, but women are more likely than men to get into nonfatal car crashes.
-Truck and SUV drivers speed and drive more aggressively for a multitude of reasons. They feel safer within their vehicles, and their positions high above the road make it look (to their eyes) like they are moving more slowly.
-Roundabouts are far safer than traffic light intersections.

I could go on and on, which is actually one of the weaknesses of this book. It's so dense with information, and its thesis is so broad that it is hard to synthesize all these statistics after having listened to it. What should I take away from it? Is there more I could be doing to change laws and regulations to make traffic safer and less congested? Or should I just stop driving altogether? Still, the tidbits I picked up and some of the statistics expanded upon have made me more cautious and more aware of my surroundings as a driver. If nothing else, this book will make you safer and more observant on the road, and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.