Driving Lessons: Exploring Systems That Make Traffic Safer

Front Cover
University of Alberta, Sep 20, 2002 - Health & Fitness - 343 pages
With the exception of modern warfare, no other human activity has destroyed as many lives as driving a motor vehicle. Traffic crashes kill and injure thousands of Canadians every year at an incalculable financial and emotional cost to society—but rather than rush to stem this tide of human carnage, policy-makers seem to accept the ghastly toll as the price we pay for mobility. Driving Lessons takes a fresh look at the complexities of the road transportation system in depth, going far beyond the symptomatic, linear, reductionist approach. It challenges current traffic safety paradigms that simply blame the driver or target "villains and scapegoats" like impaired or high-risk drivers. It takes issue with road transportation system management that sometimes puts mobility ahead of the safety of road users. As one researcher notes, human beings will make mistakes, and accordingly, "the road transportation system must be designed so that people’s mistakes do not have disastrous consequences."
 

Contents

CHAPTER
1
CHAPTER
10
CHAPTER
14
CHAPTER 4
51
JEFFREY E NASH GARY D BRINKER
65
CHAPTER 6
77
CHAPTER 8
105
CHAPTER 9
125
CHAPTER 13
194
Performance and Behaviour
211
CHAPTER 15
231
CHAPTER 16
247
CHAPTER 18
271
CHAPTER 19
283
CHAPTER 20
291
CONCLUSION
313

CHAPTER 11
161

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Popular passages

Page 318 - Nilsson, L. (1995). The effects of a mobile telephone task on driver behaviour in a car following situation.

About the author (2002)

A widely published scholar, Peter Rothe has a rich background in analysing the social behaviour engaged in risk, safety, and injury. He has directed major qualitative research studies in traffic safety, education, trucking, criminology, health, injury control, counselling, First Nations, and gerontology. Dr. Rothe is presently a Senior Research Associate and Associate Professor with the Alberta Centre for Injury Control and Research at the University of Alberta.

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