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What do you do while driving to make the streets more dangerous? Fiddle with the radio? Light a cigarette? Butter your bagel while texting as you adjust the seat? Or possibly the most dangerous, do you simply drive while teenaged?
The Transportation Research Board of the National Academies is embarking on a major study to find out what drivers are doing that endangers them and others on the road. In the hopes of making streets safer.
The plan is to enroll a total of more than 3,000 drivers in six different states in what’s called the Strategic Highway Research Program’s Naturalistic Driving Study. Investigators will install a data collection system in participants’ cars that measures an array of driver activity. Sensors include four video cameras, accelerometers, GPS and radar to identify what’s in front of the car. Traffic, lighting and weather will also get tracked.
The study seeks drivers in Seattle, Tampa Bay, Durham, North Carolina, Bloomington, Indiana, Buffalo, New York, and central Pennsylvania. For more info go to www.shrp2nds.us. After coming to a full stop.
—Steve Mirsky
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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1 Comments
Add CommentI just came back from Japan... those people must be the most distracted drivers on earth. Near everyone has an in-dash stereo/nav/dvd/tv player, always on and playing videos or whatever. Cellphones stuck to their ears, canned coffee or tea, and a surprisingly large number of stupid little dogs hopping about the drivers laps... I am not joking - seems to be the in-thing where I was. Still, remarkably few accidents, in spite of people thinking yellow lights (or newly red for that matter) mean speed up, where streets are often very narrow, with poles in the streets, with no shoulders.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe difference? My current theory is that drivers/bikers/pedestrians there don't have our attitude of entitlement. If someone distracted idiot pulls out in front of them (happens all the time), they don't hit the horn, shout obscenities, tailgate in revenge... they slow down. They just don't seem to have our western idea that each of us in entitled to other people following what we think the "rules of the road" are. Yet, traffic flows, people get where they're going, with remarkably few mishaps. As a person that particularly hates it when faced with drivers that think they can do all manner of insanely stupid things so long as they drive slow and wave, it was a real eye opener. Japan is an entire country of people like that, or at least the part I saw, and it works. Drivers there are nicer to each other. Maybe this is because they don't want to be seen negatively in a socialist society. Whatever it is, the whole traffic thing just seems to work better there than here.
The focus on distracted driving is misplaced. The problem is our attitude towards each other. As much as I get irritated by the driver in front of me babbling on a cellphone trying to get around the corner with one hand... the problem is me. Making laws to ban cellphones isn't going to make a difference to that driver... there are all manner of distractions - even just thinking, and we can't ban that now can we? No, the only real solution is to just let it happen, to calm down, to expect the idiots and make room for them. I'm trying... not doing very well yet, but I'm trying.
Maybe if we all had in-dash webcams that were publicly accessible. At any point, any number of people could be watching us drive. If we had that, we'd probably be a lot nicer to each other, more like Japan... at least we'd pick our noses less.