As you've probably guessed by now, I enjoy finding locations that are created to provide a service. Last week we talked about Freedom Cars... the company that provides safe travel for those with an alternative lifestyle. This week, I came upon two interesting locations--one a part of the Global Ideas Bank and the other a magazine geared toward a specific culture-African Americans.
With the term 'cars' heading the search, I used the Internet Directory (it seems almost ritual by now) and explored the link entitled "Neighborhood Car Rental (Berlin)". What a strange and interesting story I found here! I am not sure if it is true or not, but it is presented as if it is. This article states that car-sharing works in Berlin. As evidence, the account of forty neighbors sharing three cars is given. All forty have a set of keys to each car and when they were asked the possibility of their obtaining a car when they needed it, they claimed their chance as being 80%. I found this remarkable. The second article at this location was a proposal. It dealt with the idea of the two-family car in the U.K. Here, the families would split the cost of the car and draw up a written agreement where they would take weekly turns having priority over use of the car and that every year, for two uninterrupted weeks, one family would have exclusive uninterupted control over the car. At the bottom of this homepage, there was a scale where readers could rate the published idea.
I thought that this location served an interesting purpose. People are able to submit their ideas on almost anything and if it gets published, they will get public opinion on their idea. I think this is important to Traffic Psychology because traffic psychology is always open to new ideas and what better place to find it than an international suggestion box such as the Global Ideas Bank. Motorists, too, should always have an open ear to new ideas. If we didn't, we would never be able to change and work at making things such as traffic, our lives, and the world in general better.
The second interesting find of the week, found through the same process as Neighborhood Car Rental, is entitled "African Americans on Wheels". This location featured the premiere issue of the African Americans on wheels Magazine. As is implied, it is geared toward African Americans, those living in urban areas in particular. In this magazine, they discuss whcih cars are best for city driving and feature an "Urban Pick". In this issue, the top honors went to the 1995 GMC Jimmy and the Chevrolet Blazer. The magazine cites such things as cost, insurance rates, and ease in parallel parking in making their determination.
This was an interesting find. Its usefulness in Traffic Psychology is that magazines such as these allows people to view things such as traffic and automobiles from a different perspective--here, in particular, an African American perspective. If two people were to look at the same automobile and see different things, imagine how their views about traffic would differ! After reading this magazine, I began to think about starting up my own version--Chamorros on Wheels. That is another story!
Hear what teammates Sharla Supnet and Jason Nakasato have uncovered in their searches for the week!
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