http://www.phronline.net/article/detnews.asp?articleid=14517ampersandsectionid=1

—Michael B.

See this article:

http://www.phronline.net/article/detnews.asp?articleid=14517&sectionid=1

The title is “AP to offer emergency care services on national highways”

(AP seems to stand for Apollo Hospitals)

Highlights:

“Dr Anji Reddy, director general, Health Services, Government of AP, said India had the largest number of fatalities due to automobile accidents in the world. Studies done by various organizations like the World Bank, National Academy of Sciences and the World Road Association had shown that in India, which had less than 4 million vehicles, over 56,000 persons were dying every year. In contrast, in the US, which has over 175 million vehicles, less than 35,000 succumb to auto accidents per year.”

“The death rate is 2 people per 10,000 vehicles in the US, 32.5 people per 10,000 vehicles in Pakistan, and 140 people per 10,000 vehicles in India. He said that the death rate in India would not come down if the existing medical care facilities for trauma is not utilized. “

I asked about this, and the city/highway planners I talked to indicated that there is a heuristic that driver behavior changes at around 38 MPH. I got the impression that slowdowns at or below that speed tend to self-propagate and produce solitons or “standing waves” of slow traffic.

I suspect that might have to do with a shift in alertness and/or the cues drivers use: above that transition, you are cruising; below it you are stop-start driving.

I conjecture that “road rage” might stem in part from the mismatch between an expected and relatively calming cruising experience and an experienced protracted stop-start experience.

It would appear from your reported GPS readings that the Bangalore drivers rarely, if ever, get into the cruising zone–so they are not conditioned to expect it. They get their “video game face” on, as it were, and enter the fray.

I further conjecture that a certain fraction of traffic accidents in the US are due to city drivers getting into the cruising zone or mindset and not paying sufficent attention to “news of difference” such as stopsigns or lights, likely cross traffic, drivers preparing to exit parked cars, etc.

But that notion trails off into the much looser hypothesis of cluelessness, so I’ll leave it there.

Great to see you blogging, Jim!

I always look at things like this as a trade-off between “really good and (relatively) expensive” and “adequate and cheap (or is that affordable?)”. But of course it depends on the economic and cultural context, right? What’s the cost of improving, and what are the benefits?