Less Is More – Netherlands Traffic Signs

Less is More
Counter intuitive recommendations from Netherlands experience is that fewer traffic priority rules / lane markings/ signals etc make roads and junctions safer. Kids are involved in less road accidents if they are encouraged to play in traffic. Essentially human psychology compensates by adjusting speeds and habits to enable tacit negotiatiation by eye-contact and hence better avoidance of mutually dangerous situations occurs.
(Source BBC Radio 4 Today / Institution of Civil Engineers.)

[Post Note : “Shared Space” in London, Kensington eventually tries out the Dutch idea – with significant success.]

Mechanisation of Mind – Introductory chapter is 95% philosophy and philosophical references from all ages and schools of thought (including Hobbes Leviathan which is a spooky coincidence, given that I came across and read sections of this for the first time only two days ago, see below – my links were from Pirsig, to Melville, to Ahab’s Wife, to Una “the personification of truth” Spencer, to Spenser’s Faerie Queene, thence to Hobbes); First real chapter is “Fascination with Models” (See my thread on metaphor, analogy and model). This looks like a very promising book from an author whose interest and knowledge in the subject is clearly very wide, includes all my hot topics, yet is not obviously trying to sell anyone a strong line of his own choice – managing to remain apparently “objective”.

Secondary reference – Herbert Simon author of “Models of Mind” and “Models of Bounded Rationality” – Economics Nobel prize winner, recently deceased.