Let’s just stipulate that using a personal electronic device while driving increases the risk of an accident and should be avoided.
Let me just make sure I have the rest of the facts straight.
1. The total number of traffic deaths is at its lowest level since 1949, even as the population, number of vehicles, and number of miles driven have all increased radically.
Dmitriy T.M. sent in a Census Bureau report on transportation and commuting, providing a detailed picture of how we’re getting to work. Despite constant discussions about reducing car use and encouraging mass transportation, the vast majority of people in the U.S. get to work in a car:
Not surprisingly, there are significant differences by race and ethnicity. Non-Hispanic Whites are the most likely to drive to work alone in their own car (83.5%), while only 3.2% use public transportation. Latinos are the most likely to carpool with at least one other person (16.4%) and African Americans are most likely to use public transportation (11.5%):
These differences likely reflect a variety of factors, include social class and differences in racial/ethnic concentrations in urban vs. rural areas and in different regions of the U.S., which affects how likely a worker is to have access to reliable, efficient public transportation or to realistically be able to walk to work. In fact, there were only five metro areas where at least 10% of workers use public transportation to get to work: the regions surrounding NYC, San Francisco/Oakland, Washington D.C., Boston, and Chicago.
And as anyone who has taken part in a morning commute recently won’t be shocked to hear, leaving for work is still highly concentrated in the 5 to 8:59 a.m. period for most occupations, though departure times reflect the wider range of normal working hours in the service industry compared to other economic sectors (note that the colors do not all represent equal amounts of time):
More on mode of transportation and commuting times by region and race/ethnicity in the full report.
Oh how this Toyota Highlander advertisment is reflective of the new global order. I saw this picture in Guangzhou’s domestic terminal. A Chinese couple is getting out of their Japanese brand car into what appears to be a private yacht. A white male greets them, taking their travel items and appears to be eager in their service.
This advertisement reflects a new Chinese imaginary — one that is global, expansive, unlimited, and exploratory. It also tells us who has the power to live out this imaginary. Ten years ago or even five years ago, I don’t think this advertisement would’ve existed. But now companies have turned to the Chinese consumer, encouraging them to participate in this lifestyle. The entire global economy right now depends on the Chinese elite and middle-class to spend. But how long can this go on for until we see the next crisis? For how long can each system create “value”?
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Tricia Wang is an ethnographer, sociologist, and researcher. She is on a Fulbright in China observing how digital technologies are mediating new conceptions of information and desire among youth & migrants. She is a student at UC San Diego’s PhD Sociology program. She blogs at Bytes of China.
When tourists returned to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, there was a new site to see: disaster. Suddenly — in addition to going on a Ghost Tour, visiting the Backstreet Cultural Museum, and lunching at Dooky Chase’s — one could see the devastation heaped upon the Lower Ninth Ward. Suddenly buses full of strangers with cameras were rumbling through the neighborhood as it tried to get back on its feet.
A sociology major at Michigan State University, Kiara T. Caviness, sent along this photograph of a homemade sign propped up in the Lower Ninth, shaming visitors for their “disaster tourism.”
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com; found here)
Disaster tourism is criticized for objectifying the suffering of others. Imagine having lost loved ones and seen your house nearly destroyed. After a year out of town, you’re in your nastiest clothes mucking sludge out of your bottom floor, fearful that the money will run out before you can get your house, the house that your grandmother bought and passed down to you through your mother, put back together. Imagine that — as you push a wheelbarrow out into the sunlight, blink as you adjust to the brightness, and push your hair off your forehead, leaving a smudge of mud — a bus full of cameras flash at you, taking photographs of your trauma, effort, and fear. And then they take that photo back to their cozy, dry home and show it to their friends, who ooh and aah about how cool it was that they got to see the aftermath of the flood.
The person who made this sign… this is what they may have been feeling.
More than a quarter of people living in New Orleans in August of 2005 lived below the poverty line. Many of the poor in New Orleans stayed at home to weather the storm. Why?
Twenty-seven percent of New Orleanians didn’t own a car, making evacuation even more difficult and expensive than it would otherwise be.
People without the means to leave are also the most likely to rely on the television, as opposed to the radio or internet, for news. TV news began warning people how bad the storm would be only 48 hours before it hit; some people, then, had only 48 hours to process this information and make plans.
Poor people are more likely than middle and upper class people to never leave where they grew up. This means that they were much less likely to have a network of people outside of New Orleans with whom they could stay, at the same time that they were least able to afford a motel room.
For those who were on government assistance, living check-to-check, it was the end of the month. Their checks were due to arrive three days after the hurricane. It was also back-to-school time and many were extra cash poor because they had extra expenses for their children.
…14% were physically disabled, 23% stayed in New Orleans to care for a physically disabled person, and 25% were suffering from a chronic disease… Also,
• 55% did not have a car or a way to evacuate
• 68% had neither money in the bank nor a useable credit card
• 57% had total household incomes of less than $20,000 in the prior year
• 76% had children under 18 with them in the shelter
• 77% had a high school education or less
• 93% were black
• 67% were employed full or part-time before the hurricane
The city failed to get information to their most vulnerable residents in time and they failed to facilitate their evacuation. The empty buses in flood water, buses that could have been filled with evacuees prior to the storm, is a testament to this failure.
Lo and behold, MirandaB took a flight on Delta and snapped a photograph of an undeniably modern incarnation of the friendly round head:
Delta chose to use a digitally-skirted stick figure on its task screen. Just to be clear, Delta still, in 2011, feels comfortable representing “flight attendants” as 100% female. That’s a win with the language, a fail with the symbology.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women account for 81% of flight attendants, not 100% by a long shot. But you can see why men might be reluctant to join their ranks.
What makes top news today: a Southwest pilot’s homophobic, sexist, and vulgar commentary; it was kept quiet for some three months. This happened on March 25th, 2011, broadcast accidentally over the air route traffic control frequency during the flight. It’s now almost July. The FAA, the pilot community and Southwest Airlines kept this under wraps for eighty-nine days. Amazing.
Here’s the transcript of exactly what was said (trigger warning):
Southwest Pilot: “Well, I had Tucson to Indy all four weeks and, uh, Chicago crews…11 out of 12 …there’s 12 flight attendants, individual, never the same flight attendant twice.
“Eleven fucking over the top fucking, ass-fucking homosexuals and a granny.” (silence)
“Eleven. I mean, think of the odds of that. I thought I was in Chicago, which was party-land.”
“After that, it was just a continuous stream of gays and grannies and grandes…”
“Well I don’t give a fuck. I hate 100 percent of their asses.”
“So, six months, I went to the bar three times. In six months, three times.”
“Once with the granny and the fag, and I wish I hadn’t gone.”
“At the very end with two girls, one of them that was part do-able, but we ended up going to the bar and then to the crew at St. Louis, and all these two women wanted to do was, one wanted to berate her sister and the other wanted to bitch about her husband.”
“Literally, for three hours, me and the F.O. (First officer). When that was done, got back to my room, I’m like why the fuck did I stay up?”
ATC: “OK, whoever is, uh, transmitting, better watch what you’re saying.”
Southwest Pilot continues: “They’re still both (inaudible), you know what I mean? I still wouldn’t want anyone to know if I had banged them.”
“So, I mean it was a complete disaster for six months.”
“Now I’m back in Houston, which is easily where the ugliest bases. I mean it’s all these fucking old dudes and grannies and there’s like maybe a handful of cute chicks.”
In interview with Tom Costello on the NBC Today Show this morning, Aviation Analyst, John Cox defended the airline industry, saying the pilot’s comments are a throw-back to a different age in the cockpit: “It was more common in the past, but in today’s environment you see a lot more focus on the professionalism and you don’t hear these kinds of things very often anymore.”
Really? Mr. Cox, you don’t hear these kinds of things often, anymore? Spend one moment to Google “Southwest stuck mic”; you will find pilot aviation forums yucking it up already in defense of the pilot saying, “Well, at least he was honest!”
Is it any wonder only six percent of all commercial pilots are women? The cockpit is not a place of equal opportunity. Never was. Isn’t today. What’s more, there’s a cover-up. Outside of what airlines now call a “flight deck”, the pilot fraternity defends itself saying, “yeah it used to be like that, we’re more professional now.”
Try to find the pilot’s name. You can’t. Southwest will not identify the pilot. He was initially suspended without pay, but is now back in the cockpit under the good-’ol-boy protection program and after involuntary “diversity” training.
Aviation market studies indicate women make up 26% of the prospective pilot population. Only 7% of all pilots are female. Unless serious action is taken, I doubt anything will change soon.
Stephen Wilson is an aircraft salesperson, flight instructor, and former air safety investigator who takes interest in his profession from a sociological viewpoint. He posts aviation and personal commentary on his blog, from where we borrowed this post.
In response to my post yesterday about tourism ads presenting local (often, though not always, non-White) residents of vacation hotspots as tourist attractions and amenities for relatively privileged travelers to enjoy, Lauren J. sent in a Heineken ad that pokes fun at the expectations visitors to Jamaica often have about how Jamaicans would act, and how local residents may feel obliged to play along and give tourists (with their cash) the “authentic” experience they desire:
Sociological Images encourages people to exercise and develop their sociological imaginations with discussions of compelling visuals that span the breadth of sociological inquiry. Read more...