Driving Ambivalence

A new phrase that is going around is "driving ambivalence"--that is, younger people either not getting a driving license or not owning a car.

Living without a car in Chicago

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Driving Anxiety in the News

Chesapeake Bay Bridge: Saving drivers too scared to cross: "For those in the state of Maryland, that journey may involve driving across the long and notoriously nerve-racking Chesapeake Bay Bridge, ranked as one of the scariest in the world to cross. The trip is too much for some motorists, who pay someone else to drive them and their cars across the water."

Book Review: Wish I Could Be There

 Wish I Could Be There: Notes from a Phobic Life by Allen Shawn is a mixture of lay science and psychology with a meandering memoir. 

The author gives a nuanced and rather mannered account of his collection of general and specific phobias, predominantly agoraphobia--expressed in part by difficulty driving in some situations.

This book might give some people a little insight into the life of a phobic person. However the text is not well organised and doesn't really success as either a discussion of phobia or as a memoir.

Wish I Could Be There: Notes from a Phobic Life

New study into gender and anxiety

Women suffer from anxiety, including specific phobia, at about twice the rate of men.  Mohamed Kabbaj (Florida State University) has won a $1.8 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to look into these sex differences.  He will be investigating, among other things, the role of testosterone and a gene designated zif268, or 'zif' for short.

Pedestrian Thinking

"Unlike the street signs in most cities (including New Orleans) that are attached to poles and displayed high, these can’t be seen by drivers. These are designed for pedestrians, and perhaps bikers, using sidewalks. They reflect a time when planners were designing the city for people on foot." [from Sociological Images]