aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Sunday, May 20, 2007

How’s my driving for everyone

Back in January I listened to the podcast of a Chicago’s Best Ideas talk by Lior Strahilevitz on his idea for a “How’s My Driving?” program (like the ones you see more and more on the rear of commercial vehicles) for all of us.

Now, I did not intuitively take to this idea but, rather, was won over by the power of his arguments:

Before buying a product from an eBay seller, a prospective buyer is likely to examine the seller’s feedback score and peruse the comments of others who previously dealt with that merchant. A strong feedback score enables merchants to fetch more money for their products, and the fear of negative feedback helps keep the overwhelming majority of eBay sellers on their best behavior. Imagine if every driver on the roads had a similar sort of feedback score and these scores were made available to insurance companies. Would aggressive and unsafe behavior on our roadways be reduced? Could drivers and pedestrians do a better job of keeping the roadways safe than the police? Would the feedback be reliable enough?

He answers each and every one of those questions in copiously footnoted detail (you can download the full 68 page articulation of the idea here). How’s My Driving? for everyone is easier to implement and closer to reality than you might think.

A story in the Auto section of the New York Times today tells of samelane.com, a service that allows drivers to call strangers on the road by dialing their license plate numbers into cellphones:

To use the service, which goes live on Monday, drivers register their cellphone and license plate numbers with SameLane, which sends them bumper stickers identifying the drivers as part of the SameLane network. After spotting a member, drivers dial a company number, punch in the license plate number of the car they want to reach and wait for SameLane’s computers to connect the call. [...]

Vince Waterson, part owner of Delta Meridian of Dallas, which is offering the service, said he wanted to bring to driving the feel of waiting at Starbucks, where customers have casual conversations and even strike up friendships.

“You have this wall of steel and glass between you and the guy in the next lane,” he said. “Sometimes people see someone with a bumper sticker of things they enjoy, and sometimes they just want to talk to someone to keep from falling asleep.”

Mr. Waterson, who has worked in the telecommunications industry for about 40 years, has tried to address some of his service’s biggest potential drawbacks. Callers do not see each other’s real cellphone numbers, which preserves some of their anonymity. They can also block calls to prevent pests from turning into stalkers.

The same but different, I wrote Professor Strahilevitz to find out what he thought. If he writes me back, I’ll let you know what he has to say!

LATER: Strahilevitz writes, “Thanks for writing… I wasn’t familiar with samelane, so I appreciate the heads up and will follow the program with interest.”