Beyond Traffic Safety

Portada
Transaction Publishers - 251 páginas

Peter Rothe's absorbing volume ex-amines one of the most important areas of modern life, the culture of the automobile. Rothe takes a problem central to everyday life--auto safety-- and reconstructs it into a means of revealing the human condition. His goal is to motivate the reader to think differently about traffic safety, and to suspend all inherited epidemiological, engineering, and psychological beliefs. Because traffic arises from the interac-tion between people, he argues that traffic safety is a social process, one that is created, formed, and changed by human interaction.

Beyond Traffic Safety presents con-troversial critiques and provocative positions. It stimulates insight into the question of why traffic safety issues have become so important today. Rothe explores new social boundaries and crosses old ones. He demonstrates that interlinking social factors in a motorist's behavior reveal traffic safety as a significant facet of social behavior worthy of in-depth exploration. This may well be the first work of fundamen-tal theory in an area thus far dominated by crude empiricism.

Beyond Traffic Safety describes responsibilities of drivers and ex-amines how basic trust in traffic routines sustains an orderly traffic flow. It shows how physical risks are negotiated to accommodate social ex-pectations. Part of the text is devoted to the role played by the driver's license as a form of social control, emphasiz-ing the way in which various images of licensing convey different ideas about traffic safety. Rothe focuses on the development of traffic laws and how laws affect driver behavior. He also traces the roles that discretion and tolerance play in police work. In par-ticular, the dominant traffic violation, speeding, is analyzed.

Rothe looks at traffic safety in a new way by presenting it as part of a social scientific framework. He provides a basis for future exploration of this kind. Beyond Traffic Safety is an im-portant and insightful analysis for road users, traffic safety educators, policymakers, psychologists, and sociologists.

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Contenido

Trust in Motoring
11
Responsibility and Driver Conduct
23
Street Risks
37
Licensing Strategies Common Sense
53
Becoming a Driver and ExDriver
69
Constructing Traffic Laws
85
Policing Traffic Laws
105
The Speed Ethos
133
Using a WideAngle Lense on Impaired Driving
147
Drinking Sites Impaired Driving
161
Claim Making and the Drive for Greater
171
Surveillance on the Roadway
187
Electronic Traffic Surveillance and
203
The Emergence of Traffic Sociology
215
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Página 9 - For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate error so long as reason is left free to combat it.
Página 25 - Private ethics teaches how each man may dispose himself to pursue the course most conducive to his own happiness, by means of such motives as offer of themselves : the art of legislation...
Página 210 - But it is not the inclusion or exclusion of others that is vital to self-definition; it is the ability to regulate contact when desired. If I can control what is me and not me, if I can define what is me and not me, and if I can observe the limits and scope of my control, then I have taken major steps toward understanding and defining what I am. Thus privacy mechanisms serve to help me define me.
Página 69 - I slept, and dreamed that life was beauty ; I woke, and found that life was duty. Was thy dream then a shadowy lie ? Toil on, sad heart, courageously, And thou shalt find thy dream to be A noonday light and truth to thee.
Página 25 - ... the art of legislation (which may be considered as one branch of the science of jurisprudence) teaches how a multitude of men, composing a community, may be disposed to pursue that course which upon the whole is the most conducive to the happiness of the whole community, by means of motives to be applied by the legislator.
Página 147 - There must be something the matter with him because he would not be acting as he does unless there was therefore he is acting as he is because there is something the matter with him...
Página 7 - Fundamentally, action on the part of a human being consists of taking account of various things that he notes and forging a line of conduct on the basis of how he interprets them. The things taken into account cover such matters as his wishes and wants, his objectives, the available means for their achievement, the actions and anticipated actions of others, his image of himself, and the likely result of a given line of action.
Página 159 - What have you lost?" a policeman asks who has entered the scene. "The key to my house.

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