When I was looking for a publisher for ‘The Limits to Travel’ one response was that an American science and technology writer called Tom Vanderbilt had just secured a very large advance (reported as $500,000+) for a book on traffic.  So there was reluctance to take on my proposal, which would face severe competition, it was thought. 

Tom Vanderbilt’s book, ‘Traffic: why we drive the way we do (and what it says about us)’, was published last month, and was widely and supportively reviewed.   For those of us interested in travel and transport, the book is certainly worth reading as the first popular account of driving psychology and driver behaviour.   The author travelled widely to interview acknowledged experts and has read extensively.   My general sense, however, is that too much of the text takes the form of compilations – of data, findings, anecdotes, expert opinions – rather than providing illumination.   In part, this reflects the state of play of the science.  John Adams is quoted as saying that understanding risk on the roads is not rocket science – it’s more complicated.  It’s that complication that Vanderbilt finds himself struggling to handle.  Where, however, the story is simpler, the narrative flows.  An example is the work of Hans Monderman in the Netherlands (‘perhaps the world’s best known traffic engineer’) who famously stripped away traffic signs and road markings and showed that people and cars could safely cohabit.   Kensington High Street and Seven Dials, Covent Garden, are cited as London examples of Monderman’s influence.

Vanderbilt correctly notes that ‘one of the curious laws of traffic is that most people, the world over, spend roughly the same amount of time each day getting to where they need to go.’   But he does not attempt to explain why this is the case.   For that, you would need to read the first chapter of ‘The Limits to Travel’.