Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation (35 page)

The door-to-door system created the modern consumer economy. Now it's breaking the world. Ironically, it's also in a position to help save that world with a cleaner, more efficient, and safer way to roll. We only have to make the correct turn at the fork in the road before us. And whichever way we end up turning, once again I suggest: Buckle up.

I
t may seem that the door-to-door system of systems is governed by forces outside the control of the consumer, the citizen, or the individual driver. But there are, in fact, ways in which an individual or a family can act meaningfully, because so much of the mobility equations of daily life come down to individual choice.

What can a person or a family do, then, to make a difference?

A good starting point is the amazing statistic that nearly half of all car trips in LA (and many other cities) are under three miles. Three miles make for a fifteen-minute bike ride, twenty at most. Or an hour walk at a reasonable pace. We could choose to not get in a car for some of those short trips to the store or the bank or the post office. We could get our kids walking and biking to school again and start talking to our city councils about making protected bikeways to our community schools, so kids can feel safe pedaling to class. Schools could give students physical
education credit for biking instead of being driven to school. This thing against walking and biking is a cultural tic that we have the power to change. To see young men and women shoulder to shoulder with people in their fifties and sixties—50 percent of commuters—all of them biking in winter weather to work in Copenhagen, is quite a humbling experience. Copenhagen is a city rich with bike lanes and protected paths, and sheltered bike parking is everywhere. Bike travel is baked into the culture because the generation of adults in the 1970s made a commitment—to energy independence, to health, to a reduction in car deaths—and they forced themselves to get out of their cars and pedal. And their kids, and now their grandkids, are reaping the benefits. They just do it because they have always done it.

So it can be in your town. On your street. In your house. Just a few short trips at first, just to see. That's how it starts.

The new rideshare services offer another opportunity. The economics of car ownership—of insurance and depreciation and gasoline and parking—are such that, if you drive less than 10,000 miles in a year, you could save money by ditching your car and going rideshare for everything. If you live in a place where you might consider commuting by rail or bus if only the station were convenient to your home, you could use rideshare to get you to the transit stop, and the economic case grows stronger still for dumping your car. It would be great if the transit agency would offer this kind of service, but anyone could do it on their own. If your household is like the majority in America, with two or more cars, one of them probably fits the mileage profile to make rideshare the better deal. Save the money. Avoid the traffic jams. Avoid the stress. And to repeat:
Save the money
.

Many of our traffic problems stem from selfishness. The idiot who weaves in and out of traffic, making people brake to avoid his swerves on the freeway; who speeds up and tailgates, slams
on the brake, then bulls into the next lane to pass—you see this person every day on the freeway. He makes traffic worse. He may get where he's going a bit faster, but everyone else is slowed down by his antics.

Don't be the selfish driver. Don't drive during peak hours if you don't have to. You'll avoid traffic jams and do your part to reduce congestion for everyone else. Do you really need a toll to tell you that? If you stick to non-peak driving, you'll burn less gas, suffer less wear and tear on your vehicle, and lower your risk of being in a crash. Not being selfish pays off.

We live as no other people have ever lived, with so much transportation embedded in our daily lives that it defies belief. If you have a broader concern about your consumption habits and the transportation footprint of products, that's not out of your control, either. The same strategies that people use to be less wasteful match up with reducing a personal transportation footprint: buying used things (cars, clothes, surfboards); shopping local; choosing reusable over recyclable and recyclable over disposable. Such choices could strip many miles out of your consumption. They add up. They exert influence.

I started walking more places a few years ago, when my family adopted our first rescue greyhound. I will not extoll the many virtues of these skinny speedy hounds here. Suffice it to say we have three now, and they need plenty of walking. As I am the family member who works at home, I'm the one they approach in the afternoon and stare at silently, all three of them ringing me with those pleading eyes, telling me it's walk time. At first this was a chore, an interruption. Then it became a habit and a source of joy. And now, when I am away for work or travel, I miss it. The three-mile walks we take twice a day are now a part of my daily life, a joyful part. We go to the park, or Main Street, or we just roam the neighborhood.

I call them my personal trainers, those greyhounds. There's one other benefit worth mentioning: I lost twenty pounds because those dogs got me to rediscover humanity's first method of moving door to door.

Yes, our brilliant, mad transportation system is at a fork in the road, the path to Carmageddon or Carmaheaven still up in the air. Transformative technologies and new methods are pitted against crushing congestion and the stubborn habits that sustain it. Solutions may well come from the top down, from Washington or Google or some other titanic enterprise. Or perhaps the real transformation will lie in the small choices we all make each day in how we consume and work and move door to door—choices that, like many small steps, add up.

I
wish to thank everyone who accompanied me on this
Door to Door
journey, only a few of whom I can name here: Jay Isais of the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf; Ken Kolosh of the National Safety Council; Don Fontana of Domino's and his whole Ontario crew; Geraldine Knatz of the University of Southern California and former head of the Port of Los Angeles; Elizabeth Warren of FuturePorts and the LOLs; Debbie Chavez, Reid Crispino, Steve Chesser, and Captain J. Kip Louttit of the Marine Exchange of Southern California; Bob Blair and Captain John Strong of Jacobson Pilot Service; Noel Massie, Karl Blackmun, and Don Chubbuck of UPS; Ted Trepanier of Inrix; Ron Medford of Google; Kevin McKnight of Alcoa; Christine Anne Melhart Slay of the Sustainability Consortium; and The Transportationist, David Levinson, of the University of Minnesota.

I am especially grateful to my editor at Harper, Hollis Heimbouch, who brainstormed this book with me from the start, and my incomparable literary agent, Susan Ginsburg of Writers House, who has had my back since my first book.

Finally, I must thank my beloved family, Donna, Gaby, and Eben. This is the first time our home has been mentioned in any of my books. I expect I'll never hear the end of it.

This is a partial list of fatal crashes on February 13, 2015, compiled from media and police reports.

12:15 a.m., Milton, New Hampshire: head-on collision between SUV and station wagon kills three women and seriously injures a fourth. Cause: crossing centerline, possible drowsy or distracted driving.

2:30 a.m., Madison County, Tennessee: Seventeen-year-old is ejected from pickup truck after hitting tree on country road. No seat belt. Cause: road departure.

2:45 a.m., Lafayette, Louisiana: Eighteen-year-old college freshman dies after being struck by multiple cars on Interstate 10. Cause: pedestrian on freeway.

2:45 a.m., Collinsville, Oklahoma: Sedan crashes into fence and utility pole on country road, ejecting twenty-two-year-old driver. No seat belt. Cause: road departure, possible DUI.

3:45 a.m., Genesee County, New York: Car rear-ends snow plow on the New York State Thruway, killing thirty-three-year-old passenger. Driver suffers minor injuries and is arrested on multiple charges. Cause: suspected DUI, speeding, unlicensed driving.

4:00 a.m., Johnson County, Kansas: Thirty-three-year-old dies when he drives pickup truck into guardrail on Interstate 635 on-ramp, overcorrects, and crashes into a ditch. Cause: road departure.

4:00 a.m., Lansing, Michigan: Wrong-way driver on U.S. Route 127 dies after causing three separate crashes, and one other death. Cause: crossing centerline.

4:30 a.m., Greensboro, North Carolina: Thirty-two-year-old suffers fatal injuries when he drives off the road and into a wooded area where Interstate 40 splits. Cause: road departure.

4:45 a.m., Flagstaff, Arizona: Driver dies and passenger is injured when a semitruck hauling a load of beer runs into a culvert on Interstate 40. Cause: road departure.

5:30 a.m., Auburn Hills, Michigan: Reacting to erratic driving by another vehicle, a thirty-three-year-old driver loses control, strikes a median divider, and comes to a stop on Interstate 75. The driver is killed when a third car strikes the disabled vehicle. Cause: erratic driving.

6:15 a.m., Rapides Parish, Louisiana: A twenty-year-old dies when he rear-ends a semitruck. No seat belt. Cause: speeding, possible distracted driving.

6:18 a.m., Wichita, Kansas: A forty-six-year-old driver dies after she drives into a pillar while making a left turn. Cause: road departure, possible speeding.

6:43 a.m., Conroe, Texas: A seventeen-year-old high school student
dies on State Highway 125 when his motorcycle collides with a car turning left into his path. Cause: failure to yield.

7:02 a.m., Harlingen, Texas: A forty-four-year-old man on a country road dies after he crashes his pickup truck into a concrete spillway. Cause: road departure.

7:45 a.m., Bridgewater Township, Michigan: One man dies and another is critically injured in a head-on collision between a sedan and a pickup truck. Cause: crossing centerline, possible distracted or drowsy driving.

8:00 a.m., Gladewater, Texas: A high-speed police chase triggers a series of crashes, an oil spill, and the death of the eighteen-year-old targeted by the pursuit. Cause: speeding, reckless driving, police pursuit.
¹

8:45 a.m., Taylorsville, Kentucky: An eighteen-month-old boy dies when his father backs his pickup truck over him. Cause: backover blind spot.

10:00 a.m., New Lennox, Illinois: A seventeen-year-old trying to cross the highway to his school is run over and killed after he steps into the path of a moving semitruck. Cause: pedestrian failure to yield.

10:14 a.m., Citronelle, Alabama: A twenty-five-year-old highway worker dies after a pickup truck runs into the construction trailer he was working in. Cause: driver error, possible distracted driving.

10:20 a.m., Jefferson County, Alabama: A forty-two-year-old county
transportation department worker is killed when he drives his dump truck onto a rail crossing and into the path of a freight train. Cause: failure to yield to train.

10:30 a.m., Ness City, Kansas: A tanker truck rear-ends a semitruck on State Highway 45 as the semi slows to make a right turn. The tanker driver dies on impact; the semi rolls over, injuring its driver. Cause: driver error, possible distracted driving.

11:00 a.m., Lancaster, California: A driver is ejected and killed after the left rear tire of his 1969 Land Cruiser comes off, causing the vehicle to depart the road and roll over. Cause: mechanical failure.

11:50 a.m., San Bernardino, California: A high-speed police chase leads to multiple injury collisions on Interstate 215, ending with police fatally shooting their twenty-three-year-old suspect. Cause: police pursuit for car theft.

Noon, Lakeland, Florida: The thirty-eight-year-old driver of a Lexus sedan dies when he veers across the grassy median on Interstate 4 and collides head-on with an oncoming semitruck. The truck driver is unharmed. Cause: crossing the centerline.

12:18 p.m., Ellisville, Mississippi: A two-year-old dies and his twenty-one-year-old mother suffers critical injury when their sedan is sideswiped by a dump truck as it changes lanes on Interstate 59, forcing the car off the road where it crashed into a tree. Cause: driver error, unsafe lane change.

1:10 p.m., State Highway 13, north of Manhattan, Kansas: A fifty-seven-year-old man dies when his sedan crosses into opposing
lanes of traffic and collides head-on with a pickup truck. Cause: crossing centerline.

2:00 p.m., Kiski Township, Pennsylvania: An SUV makes a left turn in front of an oncoming car on Pennsylvania Route 56, killing the sixty-one-year-old driver of the other car and injuring a passenger in each vehicle. The SUV driver escapes injury and flees but is later arrested for multiple crimes, including homicide. Cause: DUI.

2:28 p.m., Mesquite, Texas: A fifty-six-year-old woman dies after driving her sedan out of her apartment complex, through a red light, and onto a busy avenue, where another car collides with her. Its two occupants suffer minor injuries. Cause: driver error.

2:30 p.m., Lackawannock Township, Pennsylvania: A car drifts into the grassy median of Interstate 80, rolls four times, and the forty-year-old woman driving is ejected and killed. No seat belt. Cause: crossing the centerline, possible distracted driving.

2:40 p.m., Northfield, Minnesota: An eighty-seven-year-old man driving a pickup truck dies, and his eighty-one-year-old wife suffers serious injury, when they collide head-on with a semitruck. The semi driver has moderate injuries. Cause: crossing the centerline.

2:47 p.m., Hamilton, Ohio: A thirty-four-year-old woman suffers fatal injuries when she drives her pickup truck through a highway intersection and into the path of an approaching dump truck. The broadside collision kills the woman, seriously injures her passenger, and forces another car off the road. Cause: driver error, failure to yield.

3:10 p.m., Lancaster County, Pennsylvania: A fifty-year-old woman dies after her SUV drifts into opposing traffic on the Route 462 bridge, colliding head-on with a compact car. The other driver suffers moderate injuries. Cause: crossing the centerline, possible distracted driving.

3:14 p.m., Tensas Parish, Louisiana: A pickup truck drifts off State Highway 568 at high speed, strikes a ditch and rolls. The nineteen-year-old driver is ejected and fatally injured. No seat belt. Cause: road departure.

3:20 p.m., Columbus County, North Carolina: A forty-six-year-old man is killed after he drifts onto the shoulder of State Highway 904, loses control, veers into the left lane and drives off the road, striking a tree. Cause: road departure, possible distracted driving.

3:50 p.m., Douglas County, Oregon: A fifty-one-year-old man is fatally injured after his speeding pickup truck drifts onto the grassy median of Interstate 5, causing the truck to roll and eject him from the driver's seat. Cause: crossing the centerline, speeding.

4:35 p.m., Fair Play, South Carolina: An eighty-seven-year-old woman suffered fatal injuries after she pulls her sedan out from a side road onto State Highway 11 and into the path of an SUV traveling northbound on the highway. The nineteen-year-old woman in the other car is uninjured. Cause: driver error, failure to yield.

4:40 p.m., Denver, Colorado: A seventy-eight-year old woman turning right at a busy intersection drives into a family in a crosswalk, killing a three-year-old boy and injuring his five-year-old
sister and mother. The driver is charged with misdemeanor careless driving. Cause: driver error, failure to yield right of way to pedestrians.

5:00 p.m., Tucson, Arizona: A seventy-year-old woman is struck and killed while walking on the shoulder of Speedway Boulevard by a car traveling in the same direction. Cause: undetermined.

5:15 p.m., Portland, Indiana: A twenty-six-year-old woman dies while driving on the rural road where she lived when she drifts off into a ditch and is ejected when the car rolls. No seat belt. Cause: road departure, possible distracted driving.

5:30 p.m., Sequatchie County, Tennessee: A fifty-six-year-old motorcyclist suffers fatal injuries when he rear-ends a semitruck on State Route 111 near a scenic overlook. Cause: driver error, possible distracted driving.

6:00 p.m., Pike County, Georgia: A sixty-three-year-old man dies when he loses control on a curving road near his home, overcorrects, and rolls his pickup truck. He is partially ejected. Cause: driver error.

6:15 p.m., Desert Hot Springs, California: While walking across a busy avenue near his home, a forty-four-year-old is struck and killed by a passing car. Cause: poor street lighting, lack of crosswalk, area where cars routinely exceed speed limit.

7:15 p.m., Forsyth County, Georgia: An eighteen-year-old high school student is fatally injured when his pickup truck drifts off a country road; he overcorrects, then spins across the centerline, where he is struck broadside by a heavy-duty pickup truck.
Cause: road departure, suspected distracted driving due to cell phone use.

7:23 p.m., Kenneth City, Florida: A sixty-five-year-old man is run over and killed by an SUV while walking across a street near his home. The driver, who had three prior convictions for drunken driving, is arrested for DUI and manslaughter. Cause: DUI.

7:39 p.m., Village of Orange, Ohio: A fifty-two-year-old woman dies when her SUV drifts from the left lane to the right on Interstate 271, leading her to overcorrect, crash into the concrete center median, and roll over. She is ejected and dies of her injuries. No seat belt. Cause: driver error, probably distracted driver.

7:45 p.m., Donna, Texas: A fifty-year-old woman walking along a country road dies when she is struck by a passing SUV. Cause: undetermined.

8:30 p.m., Modesto, California: A forty-eight-year-old man walking along a busy four-lane boulevard is struck and killed when he tries to cross in the middle of the street, about thirty yards south of marked crosswalks and traffic lights. Cause: pedestrian error, possible intoxication.

8:30 p.m., New Braunfels, Texas: A sixty-five-year-old man suffers fatal injuries while jogging along a frontage road next to Interstate 35. The car and driver who ran him down flee, leaving him alive but unconscious, possibly for hours before he is found, too late to save him. Cause: hit-and-run.

8:45 p.m., St. Augustine, Florida: A fifty-nine-year-old man is killed after he appears to initiate a right turn but then veers left to make
a U-turn on State Highway 16. The car behind broadsides the U-turning car. That driver is seriously injured. A passenger in each car suffers minor injuries. Cause: driver error, U-turn in traffic.

9:33 p.m., Marion County, Alabama: A thirty-six-year-old is killed when he drifts off the road and loses control of his pickup truck on Highway 253, causing the truck to roll, ejecting the driver. Two passengers are ejected and suffer serious injuries. No seat belts. Cause: road departure.

9:48 p.m., Long Beach, California: A fifty-five-year-old man in a wheelchair is fatally injured when a speeding luxury sedan crashes into him in a marked crosswalk, then flees. Cause: speeding, reckless driving, hit-and-run.

10:16 p.m., Council Bluffs, Iowa: A seventy-seven-year-old man who claims he blacked out drives a minivan into oncoming traffic on a busy avenue and crashes head-on into a sedan carrying a family of four. An eighty-four-year-old woman in the minivan dies, while five others in the vehicles were injured, two critically. Cause: crossing the centerline, incapacitated driver.

10:30 p.m., Chauvin, Louisiana: A twenty-eight-year-old man is walking home from a bar along the shoulder of State Road 58 when he is run over and killed. Cause: DUI.

10:30 p.m., West Palm Beach, Florida: A woman steps into the middle of a downtown street into traffic and is struck and killed by a passing hatchback. Cause: pedestrian failure to yield.

10:45 p.m., West Covina, California: A drunken driver speeding on a curving residential street in this Los Angeles suburb
loses control and hits a curb, smashes into a tree, overturns, and slams into a retaining wall. The driver and a passenger in the front seat suffer only minor injuries, but a twenty-four-year-old backseat passenger is killed. No seat belt. Cause: speeding, DUI.

11:00 p.m., Winona, Missouri: A forty-five-year-old woman dies when she drives her compact car over the centerline on Route 19 and collides head-on with a pickup truck just five miles from her home. The pickup driver suffers serious injuries. Cause: crossing the centerline, probable distracted driving.

11:00 p.m., Reserve, Louisiana: A thirty-two-year-old man attempting to cross a state highway near a major intersection is struck and killed by a passing car. Cause: undetermined. Police rule out DUI and speeding.

11:20 p.m., Independence, Missouri: Two SUVs collide while both drive westbound on Interstate 70. The sixty-eight-year-old driver of one vehicle dies when his SUV leaves the roadway, overturns, and he is ejected. The SUV's occupants are uninjured. No seat belt. Cause: probable unsafe lane change or drift.

11:35 p.m., Wise County, Texas: An eighteen-year-old driver dies on a rural road when his car exceeds the speed limit, leaves the road at a sharp curve, crashes through a fence, rolls several times, then lands in a residential front yard, ejecting the driver. A passenger is seriously injured. Cause: speeding.