ABSTRACT
Since transportation serves predominantly to support other human goals than merely moving from one location to another, modern-day driving is itself the primary source of distraction. Further, given that contemporary vehicle control is a satisficed and not saturating demand, drivers typically have residual attention left over to direct toward these superordinate goals during drive time. This they do (and indeed are societally encouraged to do) via the plentiful technologies now available to them. When circumstances demand the full attention of the driver it is not there and we see the increasing frequency of adverse collisions. I therefore use physical principles (Boyle’s law and Maxwell’s demon) to understand the foundation of these collisions and distraction effects. I conclude that to choreograph the dance of driving we need to build “condoms for cars”. That is, we need to build technologically supported buffer zones around each vehicle. To achieve this we will need to create much more sophisticated vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications than currently exist.
