cooling passions on the road

[euphonius]

I was just reading the monthly bulletin of Transportation Alternatives, a venerable bicycle and pedestrian safety organization in New York City that is working really hard to reduce accidents, reduce dependence on cars, improve the environment for non-motorists, and improve the air among other things. One item that caught my eye in this issue was an article calling simply for greater politeness among those contending for the city streets. There's a picture of a guy with something they are calling a Bike Ambassador Badge, which reads: I Bike Polite. It's attached to his messenger bag. Text of the report is in quotes below.

I think this is a brilliant idea, and could help to keep ourselves calm on the roads, and to help calm others, whether in China or anywhere else.

I'd propose making badges, vests, t-shirts and other wearables with a similar slogan, but spreading the responsibility to drivers as well as riders (bicycle and motorcycle).

In English:

Drive polite!
Ride polite!

In Chinese:

礼貌驾驶!
礼貌骑！

OK, a lot of drivers might be totally baffled, but some might just smile, and hesitate before hitting the horn or cutting us off. Worth a try?

cheers!

NEW YORKERS FOR BICYCLING

Do you Bike Polite? Stay tuned to the next T.A. StreetBeat to find out how to get your own Bike Ambassador Badge.

As bicycling in New York City has grown, nicknames for bicyclists have followed at a steady pace: menace, criminal, rogue, jerk. While cyclists’ status as most popular pariah may get us a pun on the cover of the New York Post, T.A. knows mockery is only a product of the spotlight. With the inauguration of New York’s public bike share program and many more miles of lanes to come, New York City cyclists’ spotlight is only going to get brighter.

With a new campaign this summer, T.A. plans to change the slant on our public image. The T.A. Bicycle Ambassadors are a growing movement dedicated to improving bicyclist behavior and expanding the base of people who support bicycling. For the past month, they have been out in the streets talking to New Yorkers. Here is what they have been asking New Yorkers to declare:
Responsible riding is safer for everyone.
Bike lanes keep everyone out of each other's way and out of harm's way.
A robust public bike share program empowers New Yorkers with more transit choices.
Reception to the T.A. Bicycle Ambassadors has been overwhelming. Cyclists are uncomplaining as they declare their dedication to polite bicycling behavior. Pedestrians are ecstatic about the bicyclist-to-bicyclist conversation Bicycle Ambassadors are facilitating. In just one month, more than 2,000 New Yorkers have declared themselves New Yorkers for Bicycling.

Bicycle lanes reduce congestion and tame speeding traffic; the simple paint and pavement that protects bicyclists also improves quality of life in New York. These benefits should be no secret among New Yorkers. Help T.A. by spreading the message to your network.

[bikerdoc]

Great idea Euph, though as a Chinese colleague pointed out, the English should read
Drive Politely!
Ride Politely!
which is difficult to explain the difference given that I'm not an English teacher LOL! and have lost some of the rules of grammar and no matter that your words still really carry the same meaning.

[corporal_clegg]

Great idea Euph, though as a Chinese colleague pointed out, the English should read
Drive Politely!
Ride Politely!
which is difficult to explain the difference given that I'm not an English teacher LOL! and have lost some of the rules of grammar and no matter that your words still really carry the same meaning.

Nice one. Will tape it onto my luggage lol. Spread the word, unfortunatly it will be far from shanghai. (politely is the adverb)

[Lao Jia Hou]

How about making newly licensed drivers take an oath?

Found in China Daily last month ...

New drivers start with civilized oath

New drivers in Beijing will have to take an oath to drive in a civilized way before they get their licenses and hit the road.

In a move to promote civilized driving, from May 21 new drivers who graduate from Beijing's 100 driving schools must take an oath before they receive their licenses. They must swear to become a polite Beijinger and set an example for green and civilized outings, Beijing Times reported.

Beijing has seen rapid growth in the number of new drivers, with an annual increase of about 600,000. Officials have also included tips on first aid in the written test in an attempt to equip new drivers with information for coping with emergencies on the road.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/metro/2011-05/23/content_12557743.htm

Doing the math - 600,000 drivers/100 schools = 6,000 per school per year. Divide that by 50 weeks = 120 grads each week in each school. On average, of course, but one has to wonder about the level of instruction, given those numbers.

[euphonius]

Speaking of how modifying our own behaviors and mental dispositions can affect road safety (and contribute to a more civilized ride), I came across this fascinating report in a listserv comprising China-watching political and social scientists, economists, journalists and a smattering of social entrepreneurs.

The May 6 issue of Science reported on a how a Chinese scientist helped cut traffic fatalities by 25% in Jinan, capital of Shandong province, even while the city's population grew by one-third.

The scholar who posted the item noted that over the past two decades or so, the US Centers for Disease Control has placed more emphasis on changing behaviors such as more exercise and thinking of accidents as being preventable things. There is even a CDC webpage on Motor Vehicle Safety.

The text is behind a paywall but the poster helpfully provided the full text.

cheers!

Science 6 May 2011:
Vol. 332 no. 6030 p. 657
DOI: 10.1126/science.332.6030.657

Profile: Jin Huiqing

Car-Crash Epidemiologist Pushes Systemic Attack on Bad Driving

by Richard Stone

China, burdened with traffic casualties, is trying a "three-line
defense": screening drivers for accident-proneness; training drivers to
correct poor driving habits; and monitoring roads for dangerous
conditions.

JINAN, CHINA-As he mulled over topics for a master's dissertation in the
mid-1980s, Jin Huiqing made a fateful decision. He had studied medicine
at Anhui Medical College in Hefei and saw in graphic detail how car
crashes can wreck lives. It dawned on Jin that insights into why some
drivers are accident-prone could have a huge impact on society. He
floated the idea past his thesis adviser, who tried to dissuade him from
the seemingly quixotic quest. "He told me that I may not be able to
finish the degree. No one supported me," Jin says.

Jin proved his professor wrong and went on to pioneer a new field in
China: traffic-accident epidemiology. A quarter-century later, the
fruits of that research are ripening. Based on Jin's findings, the U.N.
Global Compact Cities Programme in 2006 anointed Jinan, capital of
Shandong Province, a traffic safety pilot city. The $70 million project
is due for a 5-year review, and the statistics are tilting in favor of
its chief scientist and mastermind: On Jinan's roads, the rates of
traffic accidents and fatalities have declined steadily. "Jin's ideas
have had a powerful effect in Jinan," says Frederick Dubee, a former
auto-industry captain and executive director of the MBA Center and
Global Management Education Institute at Shanghai University. Experts
have called for extending the safety program to other cities.

Jin has a track record of venturing into uncharted territory-and beating
the odds. At his base in Hefei, capital of Anhui Province, Jin in 1990
opened the Sanlian Accident Prevention Institute, one of the earliest
private R&D centers in China. He expanded his road-safety empire 9 years
later when he founded Anhui Sanlian College, which launched the
country's first degree program on traffic-accident prevention. "It's a
rare example of a good private college in China," says Zhu Qingshi,
former president of Hefei's University of Science and Technology of
China.

More daringly, Jin, 54, is now fishing for genes associated with
accident-prone behavior. At his disposal is a unique resource that he
has amassed: thousands of blood samples and psychological profiles of
safe and accident-prone Chinese drivers.

After being banished to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution,
Jin enrolled at Anhui Medical University in the late 1970s and began
thinking about how to reduce the incidence of noncommunicable diseases.
"I thought, 'Why not view traffic accidents as a disease,'" he says. Car
crashes are a major cause of preventable deaths. Worldwide each year,
approximately 1.2 million people die and 50 million are injured on the
roads. China has more casualties than any other country.

At the time, Jin says, China's public security bureaus "were unwilling
to disclose data about traffic accidents." And academics were not
inclined to pursue such data. "No one cared about the human factors of
accidents," Jin says. He persisted and befriended several security
commanders. From data on 17,124 registered drivers, Jin gleaned that 6%
to 8% were repeat offenders, causing around 40% of crashes involving
more than one car. Compared with safe drivers, he found that levels of
two neurotransmitters-dopamine and serotonin-were significantly lower in
accident-prone drivers, defined as those causing three accidents or more
within 5 years. In a case-control study, Jin found that they scored much
worse than safe drivers on a battery of tests measuring everything from
depth perception and night vision to attitude toward risk taking.

These findings led Jin to develop what he calls "Three Lines of Defense"
against traffic accidents: using written tests and physical exams of,
for example, visual acuity and mental alertness, to screen truck drivers
and other professional drivers for accident-proneness; using simulators
and other methods to train drivers and correct poor driving habits; and
installing cameras to monitor dangerous intersections and road
conditions for driver behavior and road safety. "Three Lines of Defense
is a powerful concept. It looks at accident prevention in a holistic
way," says Dubee, a 35-year veteran of the auto industry who ran
Porsche's operations in Canada. Jin has collaborated with scientists at
the University of Kansas, and in 2005 he was a visiting scholar at
Harvard University.

At the Traffic Command Center here in Jinan, the third of Jin's three
defense lines occupies an entire wall of a two-story room, displaying
video feeds from intersections and computers alongside a map of the
city's road network lit to indicate traffic flow. Traffic police carry
GPS receivers so the officer nearest an accident scene can be dispatched
without delay. Jinan may be the safest place in China to hit the road.
Even as the number of private cars in the city rose from 929,000 in 2006
to more than 1.2 million in 2010, the death toll from traffic accidents
in that period fell from 343 to 263. Although Jinan averages more than
100 traffic accidents each day, it is the only major Chinese city that
hasn't had a single traffic accident in the past 5 years with more than
one fatality, says Lu Dehe, commander of the Jinan Municipal Traffic
Police Department, who credits Jin's methodology for making Jinan safer.


Jin is now writing a second dissertation, on Daoism, for a Ph.D. in
philosophy. And his latest accident-prevention research is more
exploratory. In a genomewide association study, he has found tentative
links between three genes and accident-prone driving. The preliminary
work is "very interesting," says Yang Huanming, director of BGI, China's
genomics institute in Shenzhen, who notes that unraveling susceptibility
to behaviors is fraught with challenges. Genetic studies "will offer a
solution to the mystery of why some drivers are accident-prone,"
predicts Jin, clearly relishing the possibility of blazing another new
trail.

[euphonius]

Great idea Euph, though as a Chinese colleague pointed out, the English should read
Drive Politely!
Ride Politely!
which is difficult to explain the difference given that I'm not an English teacher LOL! and have lost some of the rules of grammar and no matter that your words still really carry the same meaning.

Thanks, Bikerdoc. As a lifelong editor, it did occur to me to use the adverbial form, but I like the more staccato delivery of Drive Polite, Ride Polite. It's an echo of a once-popular bumper sticker in California that read, Arrive Alive. (I had Japanese friends who found that vexingly difficult to say.)

In any case, the Chinese version sounds better to my ear, and surely has more meaning here in the PRC.

For those who don't read Chinese, it's pronounced:

limao jiashi
limao qi

for those who don't know pinyin (with its q's and x's and zh's, etc), that's roughly:

lee-maow djee-yah-shuh
lee-maow tchee

i digress.

[Fred]

How on earth did I miss this thread ?
Thanks Jeff for the link and text, I too find it very interesting. Wonder if my U-turner was one of the "accident-prone, multi-offenders" type...