Shopping Timing
In the book I discuss special “Sabbath timing” patterns for traffic signals in Los Angeles. From the Washington Business Journal comes word of new patterns for a more secular holiday: Black Friday: The Virginia Department of Transportation will alter traffic signals at 14 shopping centers in Northern Virginia to accommodate the increase in shoppers on Black Friday and during the holiday season. Using traffic data from previous years,

Lacking Clarity in Thailand
Richard Stampfle writes: This is a true picture of a bus in Thailand used to deliver school children to functions. It is representative of many vehicles in Thailand, it is not an exception. I have hundreds more photos I could have used. While we may recognize that the driver cannot see you will find it strange to learn that most Thais find no problem with this picture. I have aske

The Effects of Beauty on Speed
I was intrigued by this line from a new paper by John N. Ivan, Norman W. Garrick, and Gilbert Hanson titled “Designing Roads That Guide Drivers to Choose Safer Speeds”: The aesthetics or “beauty” of a road environment has also been investigated in relation to traffic safety. Drottenborg (1999) studied the impact of speed on streets that appear as “beautiful” due to the blossoming of cherry t

ESC and Driver Adaptation
NHTSA has predicted that electronic stability control “would save 5,300 to 9,600 lives and prevent 156,000 to 238,000 injuries in all types of crashes annually once all light vehicles on the road are equipped with ESC.” This article brings up a few of the reasons why that estimate — as with previous technological interventions — might be high (even if there is still a net safety gain). One of the operative questions is how aware people are of the presence of ESC, and whether they can actually feel its effects, and what new problems owing to unintended consequences might arise. But not everyone sees stability control as a cure-all that will prevent all

Road Tautology
(thanks Dan Pink)