Alicia's Reviews > Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do

It's a behemoth all right. There is so much going on in the book that Vanderbilt builds skillfully but it is a lot to take in, especially if one is sitting on the couch drinking tea on a very cold day for the entire day. My eyes went a little sideways every now and then with the amount of data he pulls in, scientific studies, comparisons and visits to other countries, and just plain explaining traffic. Yes-- "traffic was as much an emotional problem as it was a physical and mechanical one".

And I can see myself in "yet still we get visibly mad, to an audience of no one. Katz argues that we are engaging in a kind of theatrical storytelling, inside of our cars, angrily 'constructing moral dramas' in which we are the wronged victims- and the 'avenging hero'- in some traffic epic of larger importance."

He uses explanations about traffic and the increase for it ultimately being more women in the workforce. And how building more roads just makes them busier. He shares a hatred for parking lots and how a roundabout is a fabulous transportation invention but does not work in the gridded-out metropolitan areas. He dives in to moving objects and our brain. How many decisions are made per minute while driving. And he doesn't even really get in to cell phones because they were just starting to become fashionable appendages when he published the book in 2008 though he does reference iPods/music playing in cars. He talks about the increases in deaths and attributions. He talks about types of cars and engineering. There is literally no stone unturned in this tome because "traffic is like a language. It generally works best if everyone knows and obeys the rules of grammar though slang can be brutally effective."

Stirling Moss (racer) is quoted as saying "there are two things no man will admit he cannot do well: drive and make love."