Strange behaviour on the world's roads
TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO
Drivers tend to be non-cooperative but there’s still hope, says author Tom Vanderbilt, seen in Toronto last year.
Next time you're stuck in traffic on the Don Valley Parkway or Gardiner Expressway, Tom Vanderbilt wants you to think about the world of the ant.
In his book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do, which is out in paperback this week, the New York-based technology writer draws many parallels between insect behaviour and how drivers interact (or don't).
In his book, Vanderbilt calls the New World army ant possibly the world's best commuters.
In their daily search for food, these insects – nearly blind – create complex series of trails that are essentially three-lane highways with well-defined sets of rules.
Two lanes have ants heading out, while one lane has them heading back to the nest with food.
The secret to the "ridiculous efficiency" of army ant traffic, Vanderbilt writes, is that they co-operate for what's best for the entire nest – unlike humans. Human traffic is non-co-operative, with people wanting to move where they want and when they want without regard to anyone else's desires.
To impose a measure of ant-like efficiency on human drivers, traffic engineers use signals and road construction, not always successfully.
The insect comparison is just one of many fascinating insights into driving throughout Vanderbilt's book, which was a Top 10 seller in Canada and the U.S.
Vanderbilt tells you why you shouldn't be in such a rush to merge lanes when one is closed, why women cause more congestion than men and, above all, why you should never drive in a pickup on Superbowl Sunday in Montana with a divorced dentist named Fred.
As a writer who works from home, Vanderbilt takes a fresh approach to what is a numbingly familiar activity in cities like Toronto. He also continually updates matters on his compelling blog howwedrive.com.
"Maybe because I don't commute, I was able to treat it as a strange activity," he said in a phone interview.
Though we may be bored silly by commuting, the act of driving is the single most complicated function most of us do in a day. We have to absorb and discard a great deal of information and make snap decisions every second.
"When we forget that driving isn't necessarily as easy as it seems to be, we get into trouble," he said.
A fruitless search on Amazon for info on the subject was the impetus for his book, which led to research all over the world, including India and Europe where experiments in traffic safety have produced some counter-intuitive results.
Places like the English town of Ashford and the Dutch village of Oudehaske have created confusion by blending the realm of the car, pedestrian and the cyclist.
That includes things like making roadways too narrow for two cars and a bicycle to pass at the same time, lowering curbs so sidewalks aren't as clearly delineated and using different colours of pavement.
It meant people would have to interact, and therefore slow down.
As Vanderbilt writes, it's when drivers feel the most in danger that they are actually safer, because they slow down and drive more carefully.
Vanderbilt also tackles the design of cars. People become used to new safety devices and start driving with them in mind.
For example, both ABS and mounting a brake light over the rear window cut collisions initially. But over time, accident rates rose again, because the shorter stopping distances offered by ABS resulted in drivers following closer, and because they stopped noticing the brake light.
The solution to our traffic woes, it seems, is to strike a balance between regulation and imposing certain incentives, such as congestion pricing.
"I'm not a libertarian," said Vanderbilt. "I certainly didn't set out in pursuit of some right-wing philosophy."
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