Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What it Says About Us)

Traffic

Tom Vanderbilt writes on design, technology, science, and culture for many publications, including Wired, Slate, The London Review of Books, Gourmet, The Wall Street Journal, Artforum, Travel and Leisure, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, Cabinet, Metropolis, and Popular Science. He is contributing editor to the award-winning design magazines I.D. and Print, contributing editor to Business Week Online, and contributing writer of the popular blog Design Observer. He is the author of two previous books: Survival City: Adventures Among the Ruins of Atomic America and The Sneaker Book.

The abridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Tom Vanderbilt's informative work, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What it Says About Us), read by David Slavin. 
 
 
Why does the other lane always seem to be moving faster? What does the way you drive say about you? Is the road a microcosm of society or an autonomous republic that functions according to its own set of rules? Does traffic work the same all over the world? Traffic Signals answers these and many other questions, plunging head-on into traffic, viewing it not simply as a social ill or as a design problem, but as a leading cultural indicator and a living, organic model of what physicists call 'emergent collective behavior', of things which often happen for no discernible reason... 
Downloadable audiobook edition. Running time approx 6 hours. Abridged.

Tom Vanderbilt

Why we drive the way we do (and what it says about us)

Get stuck in ... Why do some people become demons when they get behind a wheel? Why does the other lane always move faster? Why do New Yorkers jaywalk (and nobody does in Cophenhagen)? And why should you never drive with any beer-drinking, divorced doctors named Fred? 
 
Driving is about far more than getting from A to B. As Tom Vanderbilt's brilliant, curiosity-filled book shows, it's actually the key to deciphering human nature and ... well, pretty much everything. From the etiquette of horn-honking to bumper stickers you should avoid, from gridlock in ancient Rome to why getting rid of road signs actually reduces accidents, Traffic will change the way you see yourself, and other people (and not just through your windscreen).

Tom Vanderbilt

Books by Tom Vanderbilt

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