Collision of Innovations and Ideals

This article by Paul McNamara at Network World clarifies how creative innovations collide, when the effort to address human desires eclipse human factors, planning and safety. In the article, data from Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) – illustrates how laws and regulations (designed in good faith) established after conflicting innovations are deployed in the market place, can sometimes backfire. In this case the ban of texting while driving... is somehow increasing the rate of accidents related to the banned texting behavior after the law is established. And the article notes that the culprit is the associated action of drivers attempting to hide the fact that they are texting while driving (hiding the phone from the view of other cars or law officials).

The problems run deeper that texting or hiding the texting. In a culture of conspicuous consumption... Maslow's Hierarchy of needs is inverted and runs in this order: actualization, status-belonging, love-belonging, safety, physical-needs. So we are taking for granted what should be the lower level functions (physical needs and safety) to the point where they fall off the radar. Actualization, status and belonging are the prevalent themes in the current American culture and have become the gateway to the Brain-Body complex. The problem with this is that although it many be unfashionable to think and plan for the physical and for safety, it is and will always be the base or core of the human experience... we are just wired that way. The mind and body work together interacting with an real world environment - that offers a overwhelming range of sensory feedback. This feedback and the somatic nervous system baked in the physical body helps us to do things like stand up straight, keep our balance, walk, run, jump, clap, sing, dance, etc. 

In the design of personal vehicles... we have ultimately built a system that relies primarily on visual feedback to make things work. It is successful in terms of being a way to execute short-range logistic activities, although statistically speaking... it is something of a failure producing over 30K fatalities, 2 million injuries, 5 million accidents in the US every year. These accidents have a total cost of over $150 billion each year in the US. I won't dive into the various details related to this data... but simply note that the composite view of the system is not desirable.

Cell phones and or smartphones are designed to be a visual and auditory device, but in the context of current social interaction and with the popularity of texting... visual sensory information becomes the primary form of feedback in the smartphone activity. The device is capable of working through auditory means and or hand-free modes of interaction, yet users are preferring the text and visual means of communication on the device. It's something of an unexpected contradiction in terms of the design of the device and affordances built into it. I have not spend much time looking into all the variables leading up to the reason people choose to text over calling... but I would imagine it comes down to fear. We all know calls can be disruptive to the receiving party and we know that emails can get lost in the avalanche of spam floating in cyberspace... so SMS text messages like twitter messages allow for a message to move directly to the receiving party without the possibility of disrupting the receiver's current activity. In addition to this this fear factor... there are also reasons like the person sending the message not having time for a long talk... so she just pushes out a text (quick, painless, respectful and sophisticated).

As these two popular innovations, vehicles (along with built environments) and smartphones (with hidden infrastructures), gain mindshare and dominance in the human experience there is a spectacular collision of innovation happening where what should be technical parallels run counter to what is expected and explode before our eyes at a speed that we can not resist. Human vision limits the angle of focused sight to 3 degrees (about the width of your thumb - if you hold you arm out horizontally) and although saccadic movements of the eye work broaden the input of data... the task of reading, typing, driving, steering, scanning the road, reading road signs, observing other drivers and navigational aids is beyond what humans can do in any reasonable estimation. Recent research in the Naturalistic Driving Study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute support these point in a way that hard to challenge. 

Neither the marketplace nor the federal government can solve the problem working independently... and engineering new features that will potentially wash away the irrational behavior of humans is simply myopic. I think a better solution would to study people more and find convergence between transportation needs and communication needs. Authorities can then be established (blending the best of industry and government) to provide new certified methods to address the needs and dangers. I don't know what this would be... perhaps a combination car-phones... or something like that or authenticated non-visual telematics. To continue with the prevailing innovations, that are aimed into a "head-on collision", guided by a "live and let die" mentality is deplorable.

It's a complex problem made possible by complex systems, but even so... knowing that the problem is complex does little to comfort the pain experienced by people like the Renolds' family in Omaha Nebraska... when Caty Renolds was killed my a teen who was texting and driving. we have to be willing to go deeper and work harder and willing to deal with the messy world of ordinary people, their lives along with their attitudes and work to understand how these things dovetail into design solutions that work and somehow resist the errors of human judgement. One of the occluded factors in all of this is that America prides itself on being a culture of innovation and we have a range of cultural reservations related to anything that may blocking new inventions and products that remove old obstacles... especially in the area of mobility. Combine this thinking with our passion for freedom and ownership (especially for cars and mobile gadgets as a form of status or prestige) and you end with something that smells like rotten leftovers in the back of the fridge. What was once something that worked to serve our society – maybe not work today and we have to carefully balance the trade offs that are a result of conflicting innovations and our hidden ideals. We will get there and eventually handle this problem more intelligently, but right now the question is essentially about understanding what is really going on out there (at an experiential level), not just how do I change a little of this or that thing on the surface to try and make things superficially better.

Wrong Entrance in Vancouver

Although there is a long list of potential reasons for a driver to be disoriented... whatever the cause we have to understand that whether the impaired vision due to age,  due to limited visibility, or related to alcohol there will be situations where the operator of a vehicle makes errors or is distracted at critical times. According to TMC News, Sheila Walls fell into this unlikely situation of being a driver confused enough to obviously overlook the wrong way signage near Esther Short Park. And this unfortunately resulted in tragedy on Sept 12. Link to the story.

My heart goes out to the injured and deceased in this situation. In a quick review of the exits from Highway 14 near Esther Short Park the C St. and 6th Street exits appear to be troublesome for a impaired or distracted driver. The map view of the end the new two-way addition to C St. is linked here. Notice that the striping on the roadway is new and if you try to see this in street level view... the new two-way additions are not visible (due to older Google Street View Image). Also the 6th St exit is troublesome, marked only with wrong signs and not special arrows markings on the pavement.

It's good that the news article does mention the renovations on C St. and related work that the city is initiating to resolve the problem. It's sad that alcohol is the contributing factor in these accidents on Highway 14... but regardless of the problem - where transportation system provide a small potential for failure, it eventually happens. I imagine another thing to consider is that because this exit ramp runs adjacent Interstate 5 (in such a way that might seem like an on ramp based on the angle of roads and the direction, etc. I do think the proposed LED signage is a good option in these areas where the existing wrong way signs are located. Also if alcohol was served at a celebration Miss Walls attended it seems like some sort of awareness on the part of the party throwers should be considered... not sure what that might be, maybe a sobriety checking like a coat check in before you depart. Let me know if you have ideas.

Edges of the System

The built environment and it's larger systems or meta systems are often more fragile that expected and small problems at the periphery can easily run out of control. Multiplying stress factors in a troubled economy can spell trouble on highways and what should be routine in terms of highway patrol interaction can turn deadly when anger, rage are part of the picture.

Take at look at this story http://tiny.cc/bjdog out of UK (Londonderry). The driver is operating as if law enforcement is irrelevant and not part of a support system design to make the transportation system safe. In this story the officer involved was simply directing traffic outside busy amusement park and the angered driver chose to loop around and pull up to the office and begin shouting obscenities at him. What does all this screaming a ranting achieve? The car in this case also is catalyst for conflict that being a special protective and proprietary barrier for the public service worker to have to deal with. It's strange that law enforcement and government organizations do not have a electronic governor control/kill switch that can be operated remotely by an approaching officer - that kills power to the car engine... essentially eliminating the threat of a drive off, hit and run or dragging (as it was in this case). How many time have you heard of this happening to law enforcement officers? Drivers extend the feeling of private ownership from the car to the road and misperceive the basic functions of the roadway - thinking it is their space... their road and right to plunder through others would get in the way.

We all have frustrations... but will this behavior result in with young kids in the car. Did this officer deserve to be treated this way or for that matter be dragged by this driver along the roadway. We have to keep in mind that our roads (in any country) are a system designed to accommodate all types of drivers and some patience is required -even when the system is overloaded - which I guess it was in this case. There are so many alternative ways to deal with the anger... one of them potentially being a change of plans if in fact the family was headed to a crowded amusement park and instead find a quite camp ground or seaside park.