Book Thirtyeight: Traffic

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), Tom Vanderbilt



I want to load up the trunk of my car with copies of this book and, whenever I see someone do some jackass thing on the road, stop them and politely hand them the book. Seriously, what a great freaking book. I feel like, if the whole world read this book, we'd all be more sensible, conscientious drivers. Or maybe we'd all just continue to be jackasses, but sometimes I dare to dream. What did I learn that's so amazing? Well, for starters, that we should all be late mergers (I've always been an early merger, but after this book I'm changing my ways), that I should take the first parking place I find rather than drive around looking for a better one (which I usually do, but this just reinforces that), that every intersection should have a traffic circle, that we should get rid of most traffic signs, that I should probably drive slower than I do, and that people who talk on cell phones while driving should be dragged out of their cars and shot. Okay, the last one is my opinion, but still, that doesn't make it any less true.