Traffic

Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)

De: Tom Vanderbilt

Narrado por: Marc Cashman

Would you be surprised that road rage can be good for society? That most crashes happen on sunny, dry days? Or that you can gauge a nation’s driving behavior by its levels of corruption? These are only a few of the remarkable dynamics that Tom Vanderbilt explores in this fascinating tour through the mysteries of the road.

Based on exhaustive research and interviews with driving experts and traffic officials around the globe, Traffic gets under the hood of the everyday activity of driving to uncover the surprisingly complex web of physical, psychological, and technical factors that explain how traffic works, why we drive the way we do, and what our driving says about us. Vanderbilt examines the perceptual limits and cognitive underpinnings that make us worse drivers than we think we are.

As Vanderbilt shows, driving is a provocatively revealing prism for examining how our minds work and the ways in which we interact with one another. Ultimately, Traffic is about more than driving: it’s about human nature. This audiobook will change the way we see ourselves and the world around us. And who knows? It may even make us better drivers.©2008 Tom Vanderbilt; (P)2008 Books on Tape

Interesting Content, Well Narrated

While this book may not have all of the answers, it is far more thoughtful and thorough than some of the reviewers let on. I read/listen to mostly science books and biographies, but I got this book on a whim and was pleasantly surprised.

The author is philosophical and witty, and is rarely patronizing or redundant. The content flows nicely and the narration is spot on - making it well suited for the audio format. If you are looking for a good audiobook that is a change of pace from your typical genre, give this book a try.

Thought provoking look into the psychology of traffic.

Very intriguing, especially for a recovering traffic engineer. I am fascinated with the human element, having conducted dozens of real world traffic modeling analysis, the algorithms could never quite capture it all the way.

Fascinating

What did you love best about Traffic?

This book drew my attention to all sorts of aspects of traffic that I had never thought of: most dangerous moves at an intersection, when to merge, why straight roads should have some curves, etc.

What did you like best about this story?

Vanderbilt does a great job of tying together a bunch of distinct studies and aspects of traffic. Also, Vanderbilt does a great job of defining technical terms so the reader can keep up with the engineering.

Any additional comments?

The narrator is easy to understand, and is easy to listen to.

Traffic information!!!!

I enjoyed learning about traffic statistics and how everyone has a subjective opinion about traffic norms.

Thumbs up. May not be for everyone.

You know, I'd have to disagree with the first member review.

I purchased this audio book to take a break from science fiction and I blazed through this book while... listening to traffic. Yes, the author does present a lot of various studies and data, but he manages to put everything into a sort of context that progresses smoothly. Heck - he's even able to make a joke every once in a while.

He presents different aspects of traffic: psychology, sociology, traffic engineering, safety devices, etc. All these various topics seem to merge together in the final conclusion, no pun intended. So, I think in the end, you have to be able to tolerate through a lot of numbers, so to speak, otherwise I'm sure you might get kind of lost in the presentation of the material. If you don't care about understanding the various mechanisms in traffic, you're not going to get anything out of this book.

I did really enjoy this book - a lot of the topics I found personally interesting and I walked away with a slightly different perspective of the world around me.