Driving Lessons: Exploring Systems That Make Traffic Safer

Geoff Cragg is a tenured instructor in the Faculty of General Studies at
the University of Calgary in Alberta.

It is said that during his tenure at Princeton, the famous mathematician
John von Neumann regularly destroyed a car every year, probably due to
his penchant for roaring down one-way streets the wrong way. While one
example does not prove the case, it does suggest that there may be more
to traffic safety than mere common sense.

Editor Peter Rothe’s central thesis is that “we need a paradigm
shift, a fresh way to understand driving that combines human factors
with the netted world of traffic.” Though the points of view expressed
in the individual papers are diverse, the book as a whole is based on
second-generation cybernetic theory, looking at driving behavior and
traffic safety as a network with links to many other systems such as the
economy, engineering, and the legal system. The book’s three sections
deal with the individual, institutions, and technology, respectively,
from a systems perspective. In the conclusion, Rothe does not synthesize
the individual strands of the articles, but rather calls attention to
two immediate issues: the implementation of techno-policing and the need
for “community-sensitive traffic-safety initiatives.”

Without exception, the articles are focused, coherent, and scholarly.
Driving Lessons may seem rather formidable to a general readership, but
those who take the trouble to work through the theoretical underpinnings
will find the contents provocative.