Tom Vanderbilt Quotes & Sayings

Human attention, in the best of circumstances, is a fluid but fragile entity. Beyond a certain threshold, the more that is asked of it, the less well it performs. When this happens in a psychological experiment, it is interesting. When it happens in traffic, it can be fatal. — Tom Vanderbilt

The relative ease of most driving lures us into thinking we can get away with doing other things. Indeed, those other things, like listening to the radio, can help when driving itself is threatening to cause fatigue. But we buy into the myth of multitasking with little actual knowledge of how much we can really add in or, as with the television news, how much we are missing. As the inner life of the driver begins to come into focus, it is becoming clear not only that distraction is the single biggest problem on the road but that we have little concept of just how distracted we are. — Tom Vanderbilt

Intersections are crash magnets. — Tom Vanderbilt

Men may or may not be better drivers than women, but they seem to die more often trying to prove that they are. — Tom Vanderbilt

Knowing where to look - and remembering what you have seen - is a hallmark of experience and expertise. — Tom Vanderbilt

'Can you imagine, 30 years ago, saying nobody will make coffee at home?' Nancy McGuckin, a travel researcher in Washington, D.C. — Tom Vanderbilt

What makes a good judge? Confidence for one. An expert, in Shanteau's view, is someone good at convincing others he or she is an expert. Good judges may make small errors, but they will "generally avoid large mistakes." When they encounter exceptions, experts are good at making"single-case deviations in their decision patterns." Novices, meanwhile, tend to stick stubbornly to the rules, even when they are inappropriate. — Tom Vanderbilt

John Stilgoe, Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places (New York: Walker and Co., 1998), 94. — Tom Vanderbilt

Gut feelings help us filter the world, and what is taste, really, but a kind of cognitive mechanism for managing sensory overload? But — Tom Vanderbilt

The road, more than simply a system of regulations and designs, is a place where many millions of us, with only loose parameters for how to behave, are thrown together daily in a kind of massive petri dish in which all kinds of uncharted, little-understood dynamics are at work. There is no other place where so many people from different walks of life
different ages, races, classes, religions, genders, political preferences, lifestyle choices, levels of psychological stability
mingle so freely. — Tom Vanderbilt

Traffic is more of the in between time where we think more about where we are going than where we are at the moment. — Tom Vanderbilt

Drivers should not drive more than a minute without having a (purposefully-designed) curve. — Tom Vanderbilt

This raises the interesting, if seemingly outlandish, question of why car drivers, virtually alone among users of wheeled transport, do not wear helmets. Yes, cars do provide a nice metal cocoon with inflatable cushions. But in Australia, for example, head injuries among car occupants, according to research by the Federal Office of Road Safety, make up half the country's traffic-injury costs. Helmets, cheaper and more reliable than side-impact air bags, would reduce injuries and cut fatalities by some 25 percent.95 A crazy idea, perhaps, but so were air bags once. — Tom Vanderbilt

It's probably no accident that whenever one hears of a smart technology, it refers to something that has been taken out of human control. — Tom Vanderbilt

Experts are people who have the same opinions as other experts. — Tom Vanderbilt

The anxious positioning Bourdieu had noted could be felt in a tweeted "humblebrag," an attempt to claim cultural capital without looking as if one were doing so. — Tom Vanderbilt

Whether advanced driver training helps drivers in the long term is one of those controversial and unresolved mysteries of the road, but my eye-opening experience at Bondurant raises the curious idea that we buy cars - for most people one of the most costly things they will ever own - with an underdeveloped sense of how to use them. This is true for many things, arguably, but not knowing what the F9 key does in Microsoft Word is less life-threatening than not knowing how to properly operate antilock brakes. — Tom Vanderbilt

As Harvard University psychologist Daniel Gilbert argues, 'You can't adapt to commuting, because it's entirely unpredictable. Driving in traffic is a different kind of hell every day.' — Tom Vanderbilt

The way humans hunt for parking and the way animals hunt for food are not as different as you might think. — Tom Vanderbilt

The pursuit of a kind of absolute safety, above all other considerations of what makes places good environments, has not only made those streets and cities less attractive, it has, in many cases, made them less safe. — Tom Vanderbilt

But we should be wary of people reeling off ornate wine or coffee descriptions: Our ability to correctly identify particular odors in a complex, blended mixture, for example, begins to hit a "ceiling" at three. Beyond that, tests have shown, people become worse than chance at picking out correct aromas. As — Tom Vanderbilt

In America, a pedestrian is someone who has just parked their car. — Tom Vanderbilt

This is the reason the whole 'keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel, use the hands-free handset' idea is a silly thing," Simons said. "Having your eyes on the road doesn't do any good unless your attention is on the road too. — Tom Vanderbilt

Traffic was as much an emotional problem as it was a mechanical one. — Tom Vanderbilt

Many traffic signs have become like placebos, giving false comfort to the afflicted, or simple boilerplate to ward off lawsuits, the roadway version of the Kellogg's Pop-Tarts box that says, Warning: Pastry Filling May Be Hot When Heated. — Tom Vanderbilt

The road itself tells us far more than signs do. — Tom Vanderbilt

There is a simple mantra you can carry about you in traffic: When a situation feels dangerous to you, it's probably more safe than you know; when a situation feels safe, that is precisely when you should feel on guard. Most crashes, after all, happen on dry roads, on clear, sunny days, to sober drivers. — Tom Vanderbilt

When a situation feels dangerous to you, it's probably more safe than you know; when a situation feels safe, that is precisely when you should feel on guard. — Tom Vanderbilt