Tom Vanderbilt Shouldn’t Drive

Wired has an interesting article up titled “Tom Vanderbilt’s Why We Drive the Way We Do Unlocks How to Unclog Traffic”. In it, Tom talks about what made him decide to write Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us). The article talks about some of the fundamental problems with auto traffic, including people making decisions for their own personal benefit to the detriment of the system as a whole:

A typical puzzle: Waiting for an on-ramp metering light — a mild and remarkably effective congestion-control measure — has been proven to rankle drivers more than merging directly into a traffic jam. “What bothers people is that they can see traffic flowing smoothly,” Vanderbilt says. “So they think, ‘Why should I wait?’ They tend not to accept that the traffic is flowing smoothly precisely because of the metering light.”

The article eventually comes to the conclusion that a highly networked system in which cars behaved similar to packets of information flowing along the information superhighway would be optimal, however people would never stand for it. The lesson? Until people are willing to give up the steering wheel, expect to see congestion continue.