As I watched the intricate social ballet that occurred as cars and bikes slowed to enter the circle (pedestrians were meant to cross at crosswalks placed a bit before the intersection), Monderman performed a favorite trick. He walked, backward and with eyes closed, into the Laweiplein. The traffic made its way around him. No one honked, he wasn't struck. Instead of a binary, mechanistic process--stop, go--the movement of traffic and pedestrians in the circle felt human and organic.His thoughts:
A year after the change, the results of this "extreme makeover" were striking: Not only had congestion decreased in the intersection-- buses spent less time waiting to get through, for example-- but there were half as many accidents, even though total car traffic was up by a third. Students from a local engineering college who studied the intersection reported that both drivers and, unusually, cyclists were using signals-- of the electronic or hand variety-- more often. They also found, in surveys, that residents, despite the measurable increase in safety, perceived the place to be more dangerous. This was music to Monderman's ears. If they had not felt less secure, he said, he "would have changed it immediately." Emphasis mine.
When thinking about human behavior, it makes sense to understand what people perceive, which may be different from how things are, and will almost certainly be very different from how a removed third party thinks them to be. Traffic accidents are predominantly caused by people being inattentive. Increase the feeling of risk, and you increase the attention. I know when I am in traffic on my bike, I'm hyper-vigilant, and this has made me a better car driver.
This is an electoral problem. What are we trying to consume: actual safety, or the feeling of safety? This is a more important question than it looks like. Feeling safe is an actual good that improves people's lives; if you spend a lot of time worrying about terrorist attacks, your quality of life is lowered even if you're never actually killed by a terrorist.
The problem is that in this case, there's a direct tradeoff between actual safety and feeling safe. The safer people feel on the road, the more likely they are to get into accidents--which is why lots of innovations, like seatbelts, have underdelivered in mortality improvements. Load up someone's car with a seatbelt, anti-lock brakes, etc., and you get big gains in safety, which are then at least partially eroded because people who feel their cars are protecting them are more likely to drive like morons. Tragically, they are at least as likely to hurt someone else as they are to hurt themselves. There's nothing quite so infuriating as seeing some idiot with southern plates driving his jeep too fast in the snow because he doesn't realize that four wheel drive provides faster acceleration but does nothing for his stopping radius. Too often, he gets a rapid education in automotive physics when he skids into the back of a minivan being driven at sensible speed.
The other problem is that politicians do themselves no good by delivering actual safety if it is accompanied by a perceived increase in risk. So we get laws, from traffic stops to airport security, that enhance the perception of security while doing little-to-nothing to actually make us safer.
Feeling safe has value. It's not fun to be stressed. Even if something is safer by looking dangerous, it's only because we're scared and stressed into paying more attention.
That may make sense for some things, like avoiding traffic deaths, but for a lot of other areas of life it's not worth it.
"The other problem is that politicians do themselves no good by delivering actual safety if it is accompanied by a perceived increase in risk. So we get laws, from traffic stops to airport security, that enhance the perception of security while doing little-to-nothing to actually make us safer."
In the short term politicians can use "perceived increase in risk" for their own benefit. That's what all of those "increased terror alerts" were about leading up to the 2004 election.
They certainly weren't about making us safer, any more than forcing women to drink their own breast milk at airports is.
"There's nothing quite so infuriating as seeing some idiot with southern plates driving his jeep too fast in the snow because he doesn't realize that four wheel drive provides faster acceleration but does nothing for his stopping radius. Too often, he gets a rapid education in automotive physics when he skids into the back of a minivan being driven at sensible speed."
Whenever I am on the highway coming back from a long motorcycle ride and am tired and just want to get home I hang out in the middle lane and look for a really fast car coming in the left lane and get behind them figuring that they will get the ticket instead of me and with them blazing the way it is less dangerous to go fast in the left lane because people are less likely to cut me off. I find more often than not that car is a minivan driven by some soccer mom in her late 30s. I am not kidding and the speeds often approach or exceed 100 mph. You would be amazed at how few minivans are driven at sensible speeds.
As far as the jeep that hit them, I lived in the South for years and the general consensus was that no one down there could drive on snow and ice. I believed it to. That was until I started visiting my future wife in Boston and found out quickly no one up there can drive on snow and ice either. The only difference between Houston in an ice storm (and they do get them Houston sometimes) and Boston in an ice storm is that they salt the roads in Boston. Megan I don't know why you feel the need to cheap shot Southerners. It is not a very attractive quality and takes away from what was an otherwise sensible post.
A good example being provided by Michelle Obama last night. After describing how she and her husband came to where they are; hard work, striving in the face of obstacles, she concludes we need 'change'. Change the things that made them successful. That's really going to help.
It's hardly a cheap shot at southerners to note that Maine gets more snow than Alabama, and Maine drivers are hence more used to driving in the stuff. I've driven in snow in both Western New York and in DC; there's no question that the DC drivers are much worse in much less snow.
I love your attitude, Megan:
You have an anecdote, so there is NO QUESTION that you're right. If only all of us were so brilliant.Megan,
I have driven in Texas, Georgia, Virginia, DC, all over the midwest and Boston and I don't find the drivers in any particular area to be that much worse than any other. Boston drivers are some of the worst in the US rain or shine.
I guess I object more to the tone of your post. The Jeep with the southern plates sliding into the innocent minivan, no doubt a hybrid with an Obama sticker, driving at a sensible speed. Yes, because all Southerners drive trucks with gun racks and yell "yee haw" as they spin out on the ice.
I second Megan, I grew up in New England and have lived in California and in the South. Southerners can't drive on snow, and, hell, in Berkeley they can't even drive in heavy rain. Look, if nothing else: Southerners don't really understand their ABS.
Patrick R. Sullivan writes: "After describing how she and her husband came to where they are; hard work, striving in the face of obstacles, she concludes we need 'change'. Change the things that made them successful."
That's not the change she was suggesting.
But I guess Patrick wants to go back to the days when no one would ever have thought that Barack Obama could be president.
Why are right-wingers so afraid of change? Is existential cowardice the trait they all share?
I've lived in the snowy part of the midwest, New England, and now DC-area Virginia, and it's also my experience that DC-area drivers are generally terrible at driving in the snow.
I realize the plural of "anecdote" is not "data", but on the other hand I didn't think that this was a controversial position.
DC/NoVA drivers are ASTOUNDINGLY bad at winter driving. The kind of snow that doesn't even register as a minor inconvenience in Denver is basically catastrophic in greater DC. It's like they've never even seen the stuff before.
The feeling of danger probably causes health effects worse than the actual accidents.
"Boston drivers are some of the worst in the US rain or shine." Is that why we have the lowest accident rate in the nation?
As for the south and snow and ice. I don't think people in Boston or Denver have any idea what it's like to drive on an unsanded, unsalted, unplowed highway. Here in Boston, as the first flake of snow falls from the sky, a plow stands ready to scoop it up. Down south, in a snow/ice storm, you will be dealing with conditions you never see in the north.
I think the erosion of safety enhancing features is greatly exaggerated. From the same book, 90% of driving is done on small amount of roads. Increased congestion probably has a lot more to do with missing safety gains. I cannot maintain a reasonably distance, people simply cut infront and slow down to widen the space in front of them.
Perhaps it is more of an issue that DC drivers are bad. In my experience, Atlanta drivers were the worst of any city I have been to followed closely by Boston drivers and then DC drivers. After that they are pretty much all the same. It certainly snows a lot in New England and I don't find the New England drivers to be all that good either. The major difference between Washington and Boston is that in Boston the streets get cleaned and in Washington they don't making it a lot harder to drive in Washington in the snow.
I suppose the comments about Michelle Obama is the other side of the "I can't hire a black person; none have experience." paradox.
In this case, anyone in a position to become president has necessarily had some success, so now it's, "Haven't you made out all right under the current system? How could you be so ungrateful to suggest we change?"
Perhaps it is more of an issue that DC drivers are bad. In my experience, Atlanta drivers were the worst of any city I have been to followed closely by Boston drivers and then DC drivers. After that they are pretty much all the same. It certainly snows a lot in New England and I don't find the New England drivers to be all that good either. The major difference between Washington and Boston is that in Boston the streets get cleaned and in Washington they don't making it a lot harder to drive in Washington in the snow.
Megan,
You're touch on a much broader issue - the classic exposition is Why Things Bite Back. My favorite example of this is injury rates in football. Each new safety innovation has encouraged players to make riskier plays, and thereby increased the severity of the injuries they suffer. In rugby, by contrast, where almost no safety gear is employed, serious injuries are far more rare.
If your readers are interested, there's a wonderful compilation of automotive safety statistics put out by the Feds. It shows that the rate of deaths has actually been falling for the past decade - and that holds true whether you measure that per mile, per vehicle, per driver, or per population. But driving remains incredibly hazardous. And the declines have been more modest than safety innovations would seem to have augured.
I think about this issue every time I fly. I remember reading that the FAA commissioned a study to decide whether to require infant safety seats on flights. They found that such a requirement would virtually eliminate in-flight injuries to infants. But since it would also require parents to purchase a separate seat for their infants, it would lead a percentage of parents to drive to their destinations, instead of flying. And since driving is so more hazardous than flying, the net effect would be more infants dead and maimed.
That's a remarkably clear-eyed take for a government agency. The tragic thing is that no one has applied that analysis to airport security in general. Most of the procedures now in place at our airports are merely an elaborate pantomime, which deliver virtually no additional safety benefits. Banning liquids? Forcing passengers to remove their shoes? Please. But sadly, the net effect has been to make flying far more unpleasant and time consuming. That, in turn, has led many Americans to drive instead of fly. And, although the calculations are necessarily imprecise, those added driving miles have almost certainly cost more lives than were lost on 9/11.
So we now have the feeling of safety in our airports, even though the net effect is to increase the carnage on our roads. Splendid.
My town has established about half of a dozen roundabouts in the last five years. I agree that the perception of danger is far greater when navigating these as opposed to a regular four-way. Some of them force the driver to go in the opposite direction and around a second loop in order to turn left. It's like traveling around the outside of a figure eight. I will drive several blocks out of my way to avoid them. I spoke with a traffic engineer who told me that roundabouts are much safer, but I can't bring myself to use them if I can avoid them. Unless a city changes all of its intersections to roundabouts, could avoidance be a factor in the lower accident rates?
Cynic,
It is very difficult to judge the effectiveness of security measures. You can't measure or get credit for something that didn't happen. The security meausres you mention were not just made up out of the air. The removing of shoes was in response to the shoe bomber. There was a real person who had been smart enough to light a fuse have been able to blow up a jetliner. Had the airport not started xraying shoes, would there have been another and successful shoe bomber attack? We will never know. Because we will never know it is very easy to say that is just "pantomine". In fact any successful security measure is going to look like it is unneeded because the whole point of a security measure is for nothing to happen.
Cyd:
The key word there is accident rate. They measure the traffic through-put through these intersections, and calculate the rates in a number of different ways. But they reduce accidents per mile driven, accidents per car passing through intersection, and every other metric with which I'm familiar.
And yeah, I hate the things, too. We've had them in New England for ages, and they seem to encourage really obnoxious driving. Plus, every time I try to enter one, I swear, I'm stuck behind a timid little old lady in a great big boat of a Caddy, who can't quite take the plunge and merge into traffic. So I feel your pain. But the empiricist in me has to admit they work.
Driving seems to be a reflection of the society you live in. Drive in Germany sometime and then dive in Cairo. Germans really are more maticulous and follow rules and think differently than Egyptians. The collective mass behavior of something like driving says as much about your society and the way you think as it does about your traffic laws.
Reminds me of this passage from Steven Landsburg, The Armchair Economist:
By Landsburg's logic, motorcycles ought to be the safest vehicles on the road since they are the vehicles with the least safety features. Of course they are not. Landsburg conflates diminishing returns with overall utility. Just because safety features have a point of diminishing returns does not mean that they don't improve overall safety.
John:
That logic could be used to justify any sacrifice in the name of enhanced security. You could ban flying altogether - after all, how could you prove that terrorists wouldn't have otherwise hijacked every plane in the country simultaneously and crashed them into population centers?
You're talking about certainty. I'm talking about probability. We live in a probabilistic world. We can never know the full ramifications, positive or negative, of a particular act - but we have developed tools that can measure the range of probable consequences with a fairly high degree of confidence.
In this case, I'd submit that Al Qaeda has displayed a pattern of varying its means of attack. We banned knives and missed the shoe bomb. We x-rayed shoes and missed the threat of liquids concealing explosives. And I'm almost certain that whatever the next strategy is, we'll be prepared to foil it only retrospectively, even as we diligently work to counter abandoned strategies. You see, AQ deliberately exploits fixed procedures and routines. They knew they could take blades on to the plane; they knew screeners never look at shoes; they knew liquids were permitted. And now, no doubt, they're aware of some other flaw in the screening procedure, because systems always incorporate flaws. There are only two solutions to this problem that work effectively. The first is the Indian approach - make it your fixed procedure to screen everything, repeatedly. When I fly there, my carry-on gets x-rayed and then hand-screened twice. This requires an incredible investment of resources, and only works where air traffic is relatively low and labor cheap. The second is the Israeli approach - don't use fixed procedures. They profile. They ask questions, and gauge reactions. They'll check everything sometimes, and almost nothing at other times. It's almost impossible to beat the screeners, because you can't train to exploit their procedures. They're unpredictable.
So when I fly from my local airport, and the screener invariably asks me to remove my shoes, I groan internally. They could achieve the same effect, with a fraction of the delay and resources, by randomly asking select passengers to remove their shoes. But we're so terrified of profiling that we're afraid to empower our screeners to exercise discretion and to trust their instincts. And for a bureaucrat, it's always safer to respond to the last attack than to plan for the next one. No one, after all, lost their job when Richard Reid managed to smuggle his shoe-bomb onto the plane - how could they have known? But if a second shoe-bomber came on board, heads would roll. So we encourage our bureaucracies to respond to old threats rather than to think prospectively. And that has real costs.
Cynic,
I agree with you that the Israeli approach is better. But we cannot do that in our hyper legalistic and PC environment. Even within the Israeli approach, you are limited because you can't profile too much. We are running into that right now. We are a lot better about controling our borders and tracking travelers than we were pre-9-11. AQ answer to that is to recruit Westerners and foil our profiling.
Cynic--
Of course, you are right about the accident rate.
My troubles with roundabouts are definitely more personal than empirical. It's easier to avoid them than to overcome my fear. Regrettably, it was riding in the back of one of those errant Cadillacs as we annoyed and terrorized other motorists that put the fear in me to begin with.
Cyd
Whatever. Even in Maine, how many times a year do you think the average driver actually drives in unsalted, unplowed snow? I'm guessing you can count them on one hand.
I doubt that much "experience" adds up to any noticeable difference for the average driver. Sure, your dad, that pillar of his community, who has been driving in the snow for 50 years, is way better in the snow. But the average driver, everywhere, is a 30-yr-old idiot who, whether from Maine or Texas, has probably actually driven on the highway in the snow maybe 10 times in his life.
I live in Seattle. We get rained on, a lot. It's August, and last week it rained 5 days out of 7. We have lots of experience driving in the rain. Do we drive well in the rain? Hell no we do not. People drive just as fast, just as close, whether raining or not. Every time it rains there are a zillion accidents and gigantic traffic snarls that stretch for miles.
On average, everyone, everywhere, is a bad driver.
m stuck behind a timid little old lady in a great big boat of a Caddy, who can't quite take the plunge and merge into traffic.[says a MA resident]
As long as we're into regional stereotyping, I've lived in the four corners of the country, and driven across it and up and down the coasts multiple times, and I have this to say: the entire f'n Eastern Seaboard can't merge. It's like there's a stop sign at the end of interstate acceleration lanes or something. It drives me bonkers. But get over the Appalachians and it's mostly fine.
To a Southerner, there is nothing quite so infuriating as northern plates - period.
I don't know about in Maine, but in Missouri you pretty often get to drive on roads that are slushy, slick, or otherwise fairly dangerous. Unless you plan on calling in sick a lot, anyways.
This is a well known factor. At karate dojos they did a study between schools that use pads and those that don't. The injury rate was the same, for the reason that people amp up their behavior if they perceive the pads as adding safety.
The reverse of this phenomenon is people perceiving additional risk where this is none, as they amp up their perception of danger to the minimum level. Which is why people worry about cell phones causing brain cancer, install water filters because tap water is dangerous, keep their kids unvaccinated, keep their kids on a leash, etc. Some part of our brains NEEDS there to be a certain level of risk, and will manufacture things to worry about in the absence of larger threats.
"On average, everyone, everywhere, is a bad driver."
You should put that on a bumper sticker and start selling them Bob. This would save many lives.
"To a Southerner, there is nothing quite so infuriating as northern plates - period."
But Megan has driven in Western NY and Washington DC. So she is an expert on these things.
And that level of risk isn't the same for everyone.
And sometime people with wildly different optimal levels of risk marry each other...
Yes it is, she just doesn't seem to be aware of what she wants to do; change incentives that force people to provide for their own 'safety'. Apparently you don't realize it either.
Patrick (R) replies: "Yes it is, she just doesn't seem to be aware of what she wants to do; change incentives that force people to provide for their own 'safety'. Apparently you don't realize it either."
Oh, right - providing universal health care would be evil, but murdering thousands of people for no good reason is good. I guess I underestimated your Republican-ness.
The best traffic-safety measure of all, however, must undoubtedly be the traffic mimes of Bogota, Columbia.
My personal observations:
BOSTON: Drivers are aggressive and foul mouthed. The roads are so complex, you develop an exact pattern which must be followed. Anyone from out of town messes up the pattern by not knowing which lane they are in. You can also separate the locals from the out-of-towners by seeing if they travel 60 on Storrow Drive, or 30. Good at snow and rain. Never zip-up when lanes disappear.
NEW YORK CITY: I know nobody who drives in New York. Cabbies know precisely how large their cars are.
CHICAGO: Drivers are good but sloppy. They amble half way across the road looking for a left turn. Good at snow.
DC: Bad at snow.
California: Disaster in the snow, not good at rain either. Not aggressive, and will zip-up when lanes vanish. Lane discipline in non-existent though. Move to the right!
JOHN: The lack of safety on motorcycles does increase paying attention, but it also attracts idiots who do not believe in riding safe. You can have old riders, and you can have bold riders, but you don't find old, bold riders.
"...The best traffic-safety measure of all, however, must undoubtedly be the traffic mimes of Bogota, Columbia...."
I would prefer the Denmark approach, myself.
See: http://www.speedbandit.dk/
California: Disaster in the snow, not good at rain either. Not aggressive, and will zip-up when lanes vanish. Lane discipline in non-existent though. Move to the right!
Most drivers in Southern California are aggressive and fast. We do have poor lane discipline, which drives me up the wall since the fast lane is not the place to do 60mph. We don't have snow here, but the rain causes major problems. One major issue is that the roads don't drain properly so there is a lot of water on the roads. Combine that with people driving 80mph-90mph on the same road as people scared to death driving 40mph and the result is a ton of accidents.
In my experience, Boston drivers are better described as "aggressive" than "bad." For some definitions of bad, that may equate to more or less the same thing, but there is a distinction. Having lived in both the South and the Northeast, I tend to agree that (unsurprisingly) people who aren't used to snow don't drive as well in it. But it doesn't hurt that snow management on roads is better in the North too.
Maybe Boston can instaneously remove snow and ice from its roads, but places where I've lived and driven in the winter lack that ability. Snow covered and icy roads are a fact of life in Michigan, northern Ohio and western New York. In While the intetstates will usually be tended to promptly, secondary streets often languish for hours, even days. In a really serious snow storm the snow may be falling so fast the neither salt nor plows can clear it quickly enough. I recall a heavy snow in Michigan in 1999 (also infamous for stranding people on the runways at Metro Airport for eight hours that day) when two days later there were still snow-covered lanes on the freeways, and the major road through my suburb was passable only by following the tracks of previous vehicles through a foot of uncleared snow.
By the way, a few years ago I was the "southern" guy (Florida plates) driving a Jeep in a northern snowstorm (on I-77 south of Canton OH). I drove sensibly but had some fool Ohioan in an SUV crawling up my brumper for the whole miserable drive north.
So I'll go with this where the others don't seem to want to ... Do we (collectively) want an economic system that makes us (individually) feel safe and prosperous? or one that leads to faster growth and greater prosperity?
The post suggests that it's not just about free-riding and incentives and distributional implications (which are enough to keep folks busy) but also utility from a perception of security (or for that matter a perception of progress)?
Europeans and Americans discuss.
Drivers in Phoenix: oblivious, sometimes illegal, often moms in huge SUVS (more oblivious), like to not use turning signals (not due to dislike, but again, to being oblivious), bad with any type of weather, where water is like doomsday. Blind elephants.
Drivers in NJ (central, near Princeton): Not quite as bad as Phoenix, but that"do-before-looking" mentality exists. Not much speeding due to heavy cop presence. Like lions with attitude issues.
Drivers in Manhattan: Always liked to cut through Manhattan on my way to Queens from NJ (as opposed to the Verrazzano/Brooklyn path).. drivers wreckless, but calculated and watching for car position advantage. So they are at least paying attention. Darting cheetahs that can handle weather with out freaking out.
Who would have thought that Hans Moleman could be so perceptive?
They certainly weren't about making us safer, any more than forcing women to drink their own breast milk at airports is.
Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | August 26, 2008 3:27 PM
Cite? I couldn't find anything on a news site.
Most Americans are more concerned with perceived safety and PC rather then actual safety. Thus we strip search little old ladies in airports. Americans are choking on PC.
Re: Do we (collectively) want an economic system that makes us (individually) feel safe and prosperous? or one that leads to faster growth and greater prosperity?
A false dichotomy. See: 1960s vs 1930s.
To all Atlantic.com bloggers:
Having just re-read my posts I offer, my sincerest, heartfelt apologies to every person I have offended with my regrettable use of very inappropriate language. I am deeply disappointed in myself for writing out of anger to my fellow members and using such a hateful terms in this public forum.
Nonetheless, I acted like a person completely out of control when I wrote stupidity. I wrote things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable, and yes: moronic. I am deeply ashamed of everything I have written. Also, I take this opportunity to apologize to the Megan for my belligerent behavior. I disgraced myself and my family with my behavior and for that I am truly sorry.
I have battled with anti-social behaviors for all of my adult life and profoundly regret my horrific relapse. I apologize for any behavior unbecoming of me in my trollish state and have already taken necessary steps to ensure my return to health.
Please know from my heart that I am not a Troll. I am not a Troll.
Nonetheless, I have behaved like a keyhole. And to those people that I have offended, I want to say to them that I'm deeply sorry about that I apologize.
Actually, southern drivers have much better instincts for driving on snow and ice.
Confronted by snow and ice, we moved south, thus avoiding the issue entirely.
Crusader quotes and writes: "They certainly weren't about making us safer, any more than forcing women to drink their own breast milk at airports is.
Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | August 26, 2008 3:27 PM
Cite? I couldn't find anything on a news site."
Seriously? Then you have John McCain-level internet skills, because I found it in less than 12 frigging seconds.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-08-08-breast-milk_x.htm
An impostor writes: "Nonetheless, I acted like a person completely out of control when I wrote stupidity. I wrote things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable, and yes: moronic. I am deeply ashamed of everything I have written. Also, I take this opportunity to apologize to the Megan for my belligerent behavior. I disgraced myself and my family with my behavior and for that I am truly sorry."
I would never write "the Megan," for one thing. And I'm quite happy with my posts here.
Repiglicans are a disgrace to the human race.
I've lived in Iowa, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Vermont, and have learned that the smartest people in cold climates have come to the understanding that there's no need to drive in undrivable snowy conditions.
Discretion is the better part of talent, apparently.
To all Atlantic.com bloggers:
Having just re-read my last two posts I offer once again, my sincerest, heartfelt apologies to every person I have offended with my regrettable use of very inappropriate language.
I reaffirm that I acted like a person completely out of control when I wrote stupidity. I wrote things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable, and yes: moronic. I am deeply ashamed of everything I have written. Also, I take this opportunity to apologize to the Megan for my belligerent behavior. I disgraced myself and my family with my behavior and for that I am truly sorry.
Why am I in one post attacking and the other apologizing?
I have battled with Paranoid schizophrenia for all of my adult life and profoundly regret my horrific relapse. Schizophrenia ranges from mild to severe. Some people may be able to function well in daily life, while others need specialized, intensive care like me. The essential feature of Paranoid Schizophrenia is preoccupation with one or more systematized delusions or with frequent auditory hallucinations related to a single theme. I my case it is the Republican Party, which I have turned into a evil character in order to justify my anti-social behavior
But it gets worse, and I am scared. Over time, it becomes difficult to function in daily life. You may not be able to go to work or school, but instead blog all day long. You may have troubled relationships, which gives a lot of free time to blog, partly because of difficulty reading social cues or others' emotions. You may lose interest in activities you once enjoyed, such as going to the bathroom. You may be distressed or agitated or fall into a trance-like state, becoming unresponsive to others. You also write in the second person.
Thus please disregard my previous posts in where I call myself an impostor. There is no cure, but the paranoid schizophrenia can be controlled with antipsychotic medications, which I had stopped taking two weeks before I started blogging here.
Please know from my heart that I am not a Troll. I am not a Troll.
Again, I am sorry.
MoeLarryAndJesus:
Man, that is one soul-searching post. It all makes sense now. Of course I accept your apologies. Good luck on your recovery.
MoeLarryAndJesus:
Thanks for the kind words. Good luck with your recovery. Remember, the Serenity prayer...
God bless you.
"Posted by JohnH | August 27, 2008 12:58 AM"
Way too many Johns congregate here. Can someone alert the Vice Squad?
I re-read what I just posted. I apologize for the ill attempt at humor. I know it is hard on you guys, these type of split personality postings. But I am coming to grips with my disease. Please bare with me.
Once again to the Megan I apologize for polluting your blog. I reaffirm that I acted like a person completely out of control when I wrote stupidity. I wrote things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable, and yes: moronic. I am deeply ashamed of everything I have written.
I re-read what I just posted. I apologize for the ill attempt at humor. I know it is hard on you guys, these type of split personality postings. But I am coming to grips with my disease. Please bare with me.
Once again to the Megan I apologize for polluting your blog. I reaffirm that I acted like a person completely out of control when I wrote stupidity. I wrote things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable, and yes: moronic. I am deeply ashamed of everything I have written.
One thing that's overlooked in the current discussions of traffic safety is the difference in driver's ed in the US and Europe. I have taken the US and one in Sweden, and the Swedish test by far was more challenging--even after 16 years of driving in the states. The Swedish test includes theory that covers everything from traffic signs, to the effects of load on braking distances; a 'risk test'--driving, stopping, and controlling slides on slippery pavement, to the actual driving test which 1 out 4 fail on the first try.
All i remember from my driver's ed in the states is 'Highway of Hell' and picking up teacher's dry-cleaning.
"I re-read what I just posted. I apologize for the ill attempt at humor. I know it is hard on you guys, these type of split personality postings. But I am coming to grips with my disease." ML&J
TR: I'm tempted to be skeptical especially as this is contradicted by another posts and I didn't think paranoid schizophrenics were as coherent as you. I had a manic episode once and my posts became increasingly strange during it. Toward the end "I wz rItng lIk this" and talking about a wonderful new age.
I'm not saying any of this to hurt you understand. If this is for real I hope that things work out for you and your condition. I think you might want to try to see if you can go off the Internet for awhile if it is true. (Although consult your psychiatrists about that) I just know when I had a manic episode the Internet became an unhealthy fixation and I had to leave for a time.
Re: Confronted by snow and ice, we moved south, thus avoiding the issue entirely.
Unless you're in Florida or right on the Gulf coast you didn't move far enough. Certainly Atlanta and Charlotte are not strangers to ice storms.
For those of you that think Megan took a cheap shot at the south, military bases in northern areas give mandatory winter driving briefings every year specifically because southerners don't know how.
I think this example worked because it is an aberration from what is expected. In many countries they have unstructured less regulated traffic but as people get used to it they become less cautious. India is a good example of this and it has many traffic accidents. The caution doesn't come just from the lack of signs but from the unfamiliarity of the situation. It is human nature to be more cautious in an unusual situation and less cautious when going through your routine.
I think this is a good idea that could not be expanded.
This is hardly original, but wouldn't putting a 6" spike in the steering wheel pointing towards the driver make people drive safer?
Of course, that would also pretty much solve our gasoline addiction...
That's a very good point. If they feel less secure there because they feel so secure driving in the rest of Holland, then it's impossible to scale it up.
JonF:
thank you for your response!
To answer your concern, here in central Texas we have a well-rehearsed plan for dealing for the day or two of ice we get every several years.
1) The GOVERNER of Texas gets on the radio and TV, pleading with all citizens to stay home. All businesses cancel work for the day. Schools are closed.
2) TV stations send out all reporters and film crews, bundled in arctic parkas, to key intersections to provide breathless updates that yes, indeed, there is frozen water on the ground, and under no circumstances should citizens venture forth.
3) An elite group of specially trained drivers, selected for their inability to steer in ice or snow. These courageous drivers engage in a series of spectacular crashes. This blocks the roads, so citizens must stay home, and more importantly, gives the film crews something to televise besides a bunch of snow on the road.
4) Everyone else runs to the local supermarket and stocks up with three weeks worth of groceries, dvds, and so forth to get through the 8 hours until the snow melts. Shelves are swept bare, and long lines form of shopping carts stuffed to the brim.
5) Children wake a half hour earlier than usual, so they can go out and play in the stuff before it all melts.
In 24 hours, it all melts, and people go back to work, refreshed by their impromptu vacation.
Sweet Lou,
Which part of Central Texas do you live in? You description about covers it.
Is this really about abortion and the Catholic Church's view on birth control?
I live in Saskatchewan, where we gets lots of experience driving on snow and ice. But still, for the first day or two after the first snowfall everyone drives like they've never seen the stuff before. And a large proportion of 4WD drivers do seem to think they're invincible.
Minor nitpick - is there really such a thing as braking "radius"? I think it's turning radius and braking distance.
The Monderman experiment actually seems to mix two distinct elements. The first element is the transformation of traffic from a series of relatively discrete operations to a more fluid dynamic: "Instead of a binary, mechanistic process--stop, go--the movement of traffic and pedestrians in the circle felt human and organic." This resembles traffic here in Hanoi, which is also more fluid because it consists largely of highly maneuverable motorbikes rather than cars, and because drivers largely ignore lane designations (where they exist). The key point here is that human reaction time is actually much swifter than most people realize, and we have excellent herd instincts, which allow us to move in schools or swarms -- for most people. Elderly or simply low-aptitude drivers may have problems in such settings.
The second element is the increased sense of danger, on which most people here are focusing.
My experience in Hanoi resembles what many commenters have said: coming from rigidly structured traffic environments, it's absolutely stunning how well a fluid and unstructured environment can work. But the perception of danger in this case is real. Hanoi resembles a system in which every intersection is a Monderman intersection, and the rate of accidents, severe head injuries, and death per driver-kilometer is astronomical by first-world standards.
As if one ML&J wasn't annoying enough, we get a troll imposter to go with the almost-troll original...
Does anyone moderate these comments? On virtually all comment threads, impersonating someone else is grounds for immediate deletion and banning.
Not to get all meta or anything, but it isn't like this thread didn't go to hell anyway.
Winterspeak: Let's add two more to that:
DENVER: Moderately good lane discipline, good at snow and terrible at rain, tend to cut through changing left-turn arrows like an ambulance headed for a national convention of narcoleptic chainsaw jugglers.
PORTLAND (OR): Terrible lane discipline, good at rain and terrible at snow, drive like there are three different speed limits assigned from a lottery hat. One of those is under the posted limit and two are over.
Minor nitpick - is there really such a thing as braking "radius"? I think it's turning radius and braking distance.
Depends. Ever see a car try to stop too fast on snow and ice?
The problem is not that "People from Boston drive like this" or "People from Tampa drive like this" it's that people from Boston and people from Tampa move to, say, Denver and they have to drive with all of the people who moved to Denver from California and people who moved from New York and none of them make the same assumptions about how other people drive.
Jaybird,
I'm not familiar with that phenomena. Perhaps because no-one moves to Central New York.
the thesis that seat belts causes more traffic deaths is based on the premise that it leads to more accidents.
But the data shows that increased use of seat belts has been accompanied by a decline in the both the absolute number of traffic accidents and the rate of traffic accidents.
I challenge you to show me any data supporting the thesis that increase use of seat belts actually was accompanied by an increase in accidents.
Re: the thesis that seat belts causes more traffic deaths is based on the premise that it leads to more accidents.
You could have both: more accidents and fewer deaths. Most traffic collisions by far are of the non-lethal variety, in fact most do not even cause significant injury or disable the vehicles. An increase in fender-benders paired with a decrease in serious injury and death is a trade-off I think we can live with.
JonF-- yes, in theory you could have both.
But as a matter of fact it has not happened.
Since around 1960 seat belt use has grown from essentially zero to above 80%. But over this period the rate of auto accidents has steadily declined. The big increase in seat belt use occurred in the 1980s and was actually accompanied by a sharp drop in the accident rate.
Just the opposite of what the seat belt theory called for.
There is actually a school of though supported by refereed journal articles that the act of putting on and wearing a seat belt makes drivers more conscious of the risks of driving and makes them drive safer.