Amanda Ripley Author of The Unthinkable

My new hero Matt Richtel scared the crap out of me again today. In a front-page NY Times story on texting-while-driving, he describes a new study showing that when truck drivers text, they are 23 times more likely to get in an accident. Let me say that again. Not twice as likely. 23 times as likely. In other words, about the same as if you repeatedly blacked out for 5-second intervals at high speeds--since that is essentially what happens when we read or write text messages.

I have studied the…

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If there is one story you read all year on risk, it should be Matt Richtel’s New York Times story on driving while texting or talking on a phone. Seriously: don’t worry about your plane crashing. Don’t worry about your child getting kidnapped. Cut that out. Take all that worry and put it here.

“On his 15th birthday, Christopher Hill got his first cellphone. For his 16th, he was given a used red Ford Ranger pickup, a source…

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What I like most about Tom Vanderbilt’s new book, Traffic, is that it takes us on a tour of our most cherished delusions. We all think we are better drivers than we are (yes, even you); we estimate the odds of our next accident by reflecting on the number of crashes we’ve been in before (not the number of near misses we’ve had); and the safer we feel (in SUVs, say, or on straight roads on clear, dry days), the worse we drive, and the more accidents we have.

It reminds me a lot of how…

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