Tom Vanderbilt quotes: top famous quotes and sayings by Tom Vanderbilt

Top Tom Vanderbilt Quotes

Browse top 13 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Tom Vanderbilt.

Favorite Tom Vanderbilt Quotes

1. "As Harvard University psychologist Daniel Gilbert argues, 'You can't adapt to commuting, because it's entirely unpredictable. Driving in traffic is a different kind of hell every day.'" ~ Tom Vanderbilt

2. "Men may or may not be better drivers than women, but they seem to die more often trying to prove that they are." ~ Tom Vanderbilt

3. "When a situation feels dangerous to you, it's probably more safe than you know; when a situation feels safe, that is precisely when you should feel on guard." ~ Tom Vanderbilt

4. "It's probably no accident that whenever one hears of a smart technology, it refers to something that has been taken out of human control." ~ Tom Vanderbilt

5. "This raises the interesting, if seemingly outlandish, question of why car drivers, virtually alone among users of wheeled transport, do not wear helmets. Yes, cars do provide a nice metal cocoon with inflatable cushions. But in Australia, for example, head injuries among car occupants, according to research by the Federal Office of Road Safety, make up half the country's traffic-injury costs. Helmets, cheaper and more reliable than side-impact air bags, would reduce injuries and cut fatalities by some 25 percent.95 A crazy idea, perhaps, but so were air bags once." ~ Tom Vanderbilt

6. "There is a simple mantra you can carry about you in traffic: When a situation feels dangerous to you, it's probably more safe than you know; when a situation feels safe, that is precisely when you should feel on guard. Most crashes, after all, happen on dry roads, on clear, sunny days, to sober drivers." ~ Tom Vanderbilt

7. "'Can you imagine, 30 years ago, saying nobody will make coffee at home?' Nancy McGuckin, a travel researcher in Washington, D.C." ~ Tom Vanderbilt

8. "The road, more than simply a system of regulations and designs, is a place where many millions of us, with only loose parameters for how to behave, are thrown together daily in a kind of massive petri dish in which all kinds of uncharted, little-understood dynamics are at work. There is no other place where so many people from different walks of life--different ages, races, classes, religions, genders, political preferences, lifestyle choices, levels of psychological stability--mingle so freely." ~ Tom Vanderbilt

9. "The pursuit of a kind of absolute safety, above all other considerations of what makes places good environments, has not only made those streets and cities less attractive, it has, in many cases, made them less safe." ~ Tom Vanderbilt

10. "The relative ease of most driving lures us into thinking we can get away with doing other things. Indeed, those other things, like listening to the radio, can help when driving itself is threatening to cause fatigue. But we buy into the myth of multitasking with little actual knowledge of how much we can really add in or, as with the television news, how much we are missing. As the inner life of the driver begins to come into focus, it is becoming clear not only that distraction is the single biggest problem on the road but that we have little concept of just how distracted we are." ~ Tom Vanderbilt

11. "This is the reason the whole ‘keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel, use the hands-free handset' idea is a silly thing," Simons said. "Having your eyes on the road doesn't do any good unless your attention is on the road too." ~ Tom Vanderbilt

12. "Many traffic signs have become like placebos, giving false comfort to the afflicted, or simple boilerplate to ward off lawsuits, the roadway version of the Kellogg's Pop-Tarts box that says, "Warning: Pastry Filling May Be Hot When Heated." ~ Tom Vanderbilt

13. "Whether advanced driver training helps drivers in the long term is one of those controversial and unresolved mysteries of the road, but my eye-opening experience at Bondurant raises the curious idea that we buy cars—for most people one of the most costly things they will ever own—with an underdeveloped sense of how to use them. This is true for many things, arguably, but not knowing what the F9 key does in Microsoft Word is less life-threatening than not knowing how to properly operate antilock brakes." ~ Tom Vanderbilt

Tom Vanderbilt Quotes Pictures

<< Marc Auge Quotes

Sofia Navarro Quotes >>

Today's Quote

Insofar as we appreciate order, it is when we perceive it as being accompanied by complexity, when we feel that a variety of elements has been brought to order--that windows, doors and other details have been knitted into a scheme that manages to be at once regular and intricate. (p184)"
Author: Alain De Botton