Beyond Traffic Safety

Peter Rothe's absorbing volume ex-amines one of the most important areas of modern life, the culture of the automobile. Rothe takes a problem central to everyday life--auto safety-- and reconstructs it into a means of revealing the human condition. His goal is to motivate the reader to think differently about traffic safety, and to suspend all inherited epidemiological, engineering, and psychological beliefs. Because traffic arises from the interac-tion between people, he argues that traffic safety is a social process, one that is created, formed, and changed by human interaction.

Beyond Traffic Safety presents con-troversial critiques and provocative positions. It stimulates insight into the question of why traffic safety issues have become so important today. Rothe explores new social boundaries and crosses old ones. He demonstrates that interlinking social factors in a motorist's behavior reveal traffic safety as a significant facet of social behavior worthy of in-depth exploration. This may well be the first work of fundamen-tal theory in an area thus far dominated by crude empiricism.

Beyond Traffic Safety describes responsibilities of drivers and ex-amines how basic trust in traffic routines sustains an orderly traffic flow. It shows how physical risks are negotiated to accommodate social ex-pectations. Part of the text is devoted to the role played by the driver's license as a form of social control, emphasiz-ing the way in which various images of licensing convey different ideas about traffic safety. Rothe focuses on the development of traffic laws and how laws affect driver behavior. He also traces the roles that discretion and tolerance play in police work. In par-ticular, the dominant traffic violation, speeding, is analyzed.

Rothe looks at traffic safety in a new way by presenting it as part of a social scientific framework. He provides a basis for future exploration of this kind. Beyond Traffic Safety is an im-portant and insightful analysis for road users, traffic safety educators, policymakers, psychologists, and sociologists.