Information is Everything
by David Thomson
Introduction
Driving Psychology Facts is a new article option that Dr. James (aka Dr Driving) has asked us to pursue and this is the first to be done. Unfortunately no one else seemed inclined to tackle this article possibly because of the detail that Dr. James was asking for. The purpose of this article is to educate and breakdown previous misconceptions. Many of the facts here might surprise you and many you would never have thought of asking. Overall, this should be a good starting point for a wealth of information and hopefully future generations will carry on the work and expand it by comparing different data sources.
Why I choose this Report
I originally chose this report to get a opportunity to express myself as a motorcyclist. There is an idea that motorcycles are these death machines that should not be allowed on the road.
When in actuality the story goes like:
O.K. I hope that I got you warmed up. You can jump to more here.
My Reaction and Involvement
My initial reaction to this assignment was that is was definately too large and complex compared to other assignments like "Music and Driving" where there really is no information to collect and people just write of personal experiences. This was the only assignment where I could flex my motorcycle knowledge and hopefully influence the uneducated.
When I first began I just started to search the web with driving facts safety and found what you see in my bookmarks. From there I began with usroads.com which is operated by TransSafety, Inc. This is a non-profit agency that subscribes to a few journals and is geared to the improvement to our roadways. here I found about everything (by inserting statistics into their search engine) that I thought I would need and felt satisfied enough to restructure my report. The motorcycle facts was a little more difficult while I was searching for the HURT Study and was lucky enough to come across another web page that gave some nice comparisons to other vehicle accidents and fatalities.
The first facts page is on humans and focuses on children and the elderly. These are often forgotten groups might surprise you in how they interact with the traffic world. Children are dangerously involved with fatalities while the elderly need things like a special way to do signage to help them navigate.
The second group focuses on vehicles. Here we have information on bicycles and insurance test results. Have you ever wondered about when and where a bicyclist is most in danger. Or what vehicle is least likely to survive a crash. Check it out!
The third and last facts page is, of course, motorcycling and you already know what is in store for you there.
As a supplement to our course schedule, we are given a special book called Challenging the Old Order by J. Peter Rothe. This fascinating book takes a sociological approach to traffic safety, policy, education and problems. A quote from the book that was contributed by Ezra Hauer states...
| "People tend to believe in the importance of what they do. Legislators think that proper laws are the key to more safety; the police think that enforcement is of paramount importance, engineers believe that the way we build roads and vehicles and the way we manage traffic is the main determinant of safety; still other audiences tend to discount the importance of engineering action and emphasize the role of human factor and of road user behavior. These ego-supporting prejudices are given public expression when the many camps argue that resources be spent on their favored projects. It is in this context that a variety of nonsense is promulgated."(40) |
The nonsense the author was talking about is the idea that there is one single cause to an accident and that it happened just prior to the crash. This is very important because the facts that are inside this site may be contributed to some type of error whether it be the driver, vehicle, or signage. Can we really just point the finger and be certain that we know what had caused the accident? It is so easy to do that without taking the time to use a multiperspective approach in which each piece has its own responsibility. If we could point to one factor then the problem would be much easier to solve and our present situation wouldn't be going in separate directions. Think about it. We can not agree on the speed limit of our highways because we still haven't determined if speed kills! (present theory is moving towards speed differentials) This should be a simple yes/no question but it can not be answered without restricting it to special situations.
In conclusion I believe that I have been enlightened and hope to have done the same with those who have read this in its entirety. I must tell you that facts are only facts until we have a new fact. Many facts come from statistics which never proves anything but rather gives us an association between variables. Statistics only give us a generalization of the population but can never be exact. When reading any article remember to be skeptical. Third party variables almost always exist and without that information we can never say anything with 100% confidence. BUT, Most Journal articles require that the researcher be at least 95% confident of their findings before they are even allowed to be published therefore we can think of them in that way.
I decided that I must take a different route to help future generations. Since the requirements asked for three entries for each and every of the thirty-nine facts as well as a report I felt that I could give the three entries on a much larger group of facts such that they could stay in context. At the same time, future generations could benefit because I have left several topics for them to do and by the time that future students finish those then my topics will be outdated. Furthermore, people in search of information on these topics will have a wealth of information on a topic rather than just three. I felt inclined to do this in this manner because some of the letters that we had encountered in our discussion sessions had asked for globs of information and I thought that this would be a great benefit to them also.
Compare To Others In My Generation
Since others have not done this I can only comment on Dr. Driving's site which he admits is flawed because it does not have links nor explanations of each group of facts to inform the reader. I will admit that he did a good job with keeping things organized into tables. I am not knocking his site because he was the first to admit the flaw and that is why he wanted us to to this report on facts of driving to help the process of information along.
Don't sweat the trouble! There is always a another way that you can achieve a similar or better effect. This is only my interpretation of how I think the assignment should be done because it addresses a more global approach to a single topic. I emphasize the use of colored text to highlight the important or scary material so that they will stand out to the reader. I also suggest splitting up you material into more than one facts.html as I have done to keep yourself organized and decrease the load of one file. I would also suggest getting more than one source. This would strengthen your report as well as give the opportunity for conflicting information. BUT, you would not be able to do this with the original instructions because it does not provide leeway for discussion.