Traffic
A: Yes, though it could have been any highway in the world, where countless drivers, driving on a crowded road that is about to lose a lane, have had to make a simple decision: When to merge. For my entire driving life, I had always merged "early," thinking it was the polite and efficient thing to do. I viewed those who kept driving to the merge point, to the front of line, as selfish jerks who were making life miserable for the rest of us. I began to wonder: Were they really making things worse? Was I making things worse? Could merging be made easier? Why were there late mergers and early mergers, and why did people get so worked up about the whole thing? In that everyday moment I seemed to sense a vast, largely under-explored wilderness before me: Traffic.
Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)
Amazon Price: $16.47 (as of 12/25/2009)
Prologue: Why I Became a Late Merger (and Why You Should Too)
1. Why Does the Other Lane Always Seem Faster? How Traffic Messes with Our Heads
* Shut Up, I Can't Hear You: Anonymity, Aggression, and the Problems of Communicating While Driving
* Are You Lookin' at Me? Eye Contact, Stereotypes, and Social Interaction on the Road
* Waiting in Line, Waiting in Traffic: Why the Other Lane Always Moves Faster
* Postscript: And Now, the Secrets of Late Merging Revealed
2. Why You're Not as Good a Driver as You Think You Are
* If Driving Is So Easy, Why Is It So Hard for a Robot? What Teaching Machines to Drive Teaches Us About Driving
* How's My Driving? How the Hell Should I Know? Why Lack of Feedback Fails Us on the Road
3. How Our Eyes and Minds Betray Us on the Road
* Keep Your Mind on the Road: Why It's So Hard to Pay Attention in Traffic
* Objects in Traffic Are More Complicated Than They Appear: How Our Driving Eyes Deceive Us
4. Why Ants Don't Get into Traffic Jams (and Humans Do): On Cooperation as a Cure for Congestion
* Meet the World's Best Commuter: What We Can Learn from Ants, Locusts, and Crickets
* Playing God In Los Angeles
* When Slower Is Faster, or How the Few Defeat the Many: Traffic Flow and Human Nature
5. Why Women Cause More Congestion Than Men (and Other Secrets of Traffic)
* Who Are All These People? The Psychology of Commuting
* The Parking Problem: Why We Are Inefficient Parkers and How This Causes Congestion
6. Why More Roads Lead to More Traffic (and What to Do About It)
* The Selfish Commuter
* A Few Mickey Mouse Solutions to the Traffic Problem
7. When Dangerous Roads are Safer
* The Highway Conundrum: How Drivers Adapt to the Road They See
* The Trouble with Traffic Signs -- and How Getting Rid of Them Can Make Things Better for Everyone
* Forgiving Roads or Permissive Roads? The Fatal Flaws of Traffic Engineering
8. How Traffic Explains the World: On Driving with a Local Accent
* "Good Brakes, Good Horn, Good Luck": Plunging into the Maelstrom of Delhi Traffic
* Why New Yorkers Jaywalk (and Why They Don't in Copenhagen): Traffic as Culture
* Danger: Corruption Ahead -- the Secret Indicator of Crazy Traffic
9. Why You Shouldn't Drive with a Beer-Drinking Divorced Doctor Named Fred on Super Bowl Sunday in a Pickup Truck in Rural Montana: What's Risky on the Road and Why
* Semiconscious Fear: How We Misunderstand the Risks of the Road
* Should I Stay or Should I Go? Why Risk on the Road Is So Complicated
* The Risks of Safety
Epilogue: Driving Lessons
Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)
Amazon Price: $16.47 (as of 12/25/2009)
It's easy to read and endlessly fascinating. I finished the book in a few hours, unable to tear myself away. One caveat, which another reviewer has mentioned: there are about 100 pages of notes, mostly bibliography but with a few interesting nuggets concealed... be sure to skim the notes at least once per chapter. It might have been nice to have some of these as bottom-of-the-page footnotes.
Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)
Amazon Price: $16.47 (as of 12/25/2009)
How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization
Amazon Price: (as of 12/25/2009)
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