Monday 11 February 2008

Save the world, drive for fun

According to Professor Iain Borden of University College London, environmentalists might have more success in encouraging people to use public transport if they campaigned for people to drive only for fun.

He warns that ignoring the cultural reasons why people like to drive can undermine efforts to encourage people to use more public transport. So instead of saying that people should drive only when necessary, activists should be changing the emphasis and advocating driving only for pleasure.

complex road junction

Photo by Flickr user .K.M. Creative Commons licence.

In the same lecture he spoke about "psychological traffic calming" by removing signs, lights, lines from some junctions to slow traffic by removing instructions to road users, also allowing eye contact to occur. The city looks better, drivers and pedestrians become more responsible and no longer "sign-watching zombies but instead alert, attentive, people-aware citizens".

That is the theory anyway.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks very much for visiting my blog.

    The theory is interesting. Perhaps I should translate this for my hubby who likes driving for pleasure but he surely goes too fast.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It was my pleasure to visit your blog :)
    Yes it's an interesting theory but don't count on me to be the first to try it! I think it could be quite scary.

    ReplyDelete

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