Socialities in Motion: Automobility and Car Cruising in Iceland☆

Abstract

Car cruising is a common phenomenon around the globe. In Iceland, the activity is a major assimilative sociocultural phenomenon for young people and especially for novice drivers. This article documents car cruising in Iceland and contextualizes it within discussions of automobility. It is based on semi-structured, ‘on the move’ interviews taken with people during cruising. Participants were also asked to take pictures of their cruising activities. It seems that car cruising is an opportunity for young people to integrate themselves into the systemic regime of automobility. This shows the importance of socialities when it comes to individual practices and expressions of automobility, but also the structuring role of those socialities. The paper also elucidates how that activity impacts upon spaces. It demonstrates that it is intimately connected with human territoriality, or how young drivers appropriate and influence the spaces and places of automobility and ultimately contribute to their production and reproduction, thus sustaining the systemic regime of automobility.     

私家车增长logistic回归分析模型

为汽车销售行业制定营销策略提供借鉴,也为私家车消费者理性决策提供参考,通过分析购置私家车的主要影响因素家庭因素、停车条件、交通环境、养车费用与购车决策之间的相关关系,运用SPSS软件进行模拟运算,建立了私家车购置logistic回归分析模型,应用该模型对私家车增加进行了预测,并对私家车购置决策提供了可参考的方法。     

Cellular telephones and motor-vehicle collisions: Some variations on matched-pairs analysis

We describe the analysis of some matched-pair binary data arising from a study designed to investigate whether cellular-telephone use is associated with motor-vehicle collisions. Conditional and random effects approaches to the problem are derived and compared. Driving intermittency is a potential confounder whose effect is assessed by strategic choices of the control period and by application of the bootstrap. The marked discrepancy between the conditional and random approaches merits further study.     

Do Drivers of Small Cars Take Less Risk in Everyday Driving?

Previously reported observed data on risky everyday driving are brought together and reanalyzed in order to focus on the relation between risky driving and the size of the car being driven, as indicated by car mass. The measures of risky driving include separation between vehicles in heavy freeway traffic and speed on a two lane road. Observed seat belt use provides a third measure of driver risk. Confounding effects arising from the observed association between car mass and driver age are taken into account by segmenting the data into three driver age groups. Driver risk taking is found to increase with increasing car mass for each of these three aspects of everyday driving. The implications of these results with respect to driver fatality rates are discussed in terms of a simple model relating observed risky driving to the likelihood of involvement in a severe crash.     

公车改革对私人轿车拥有和使用的影响

鉴于公车消费产生的公共资源浪费、效率低下等弊病,从中国公车改革背景入手,通过对国外公务用车制度的介绍和对中国正在进行的公车改革的分析,从消费经济和城市交通两个方面对公车改革给私人轿车拥有和使用的影响进行剖析,并通过案例分析将公车改革对私人轿车数量的影响定量化,进而由此得出结论,公车改革将激发私人轿车的拥有和使用,同时给城市交通带来新的压力。     

基于新制度经济学的私车牌照分配政策分析

交通拥堵是当前城市所面临的一大问题,在分析拥堵的根本原因基础上,针对当前北京、上海所施行的两大典型私车牌照分配政策分析其政策的效用。首先以新制度经济学的视角,从社会成本及产权分配角度入手,对交通拥堵产生的原因进行了探讨。然后建立相应的定量经济学模型,对北京、上海两个城市不同的现行私车牌照分配政策,从执行效果、社会收益、副作用三个方面进行了效用分析,从中总结出拥堵的本质原因是汽车的使用量而非保有量问题,车牌限制只是暂行之计,并以此提出了一些相应的治堵建议。     

The Value of Safety as Revealed in the Swedish Car Market: An Application of the Hedonic Pricing Approach

In this article the hedonic regression technique is used to estimate the value of traffic safety, using information from the Swedish market for automobiles. The results from the study show that the market price of an automobile is negatively correlated with its inherent risk level, i.e. Swedish car consumers pay a safety premium for safer cars. In comparison to previous Swedish stated-preference studies, this study reveals a lower willingness to pay for additional car safety, which might be a result of the interaction between government interventions and individual self-insurance and self-protection.JEL Classification: C51, D61, J28     

Acoustic Cocooning

ABSTRACT

Since the late 1990s, car manufacturers increasingly underline their cars' interior tranquility. Both this acoustic condition and the availability of car audio sets enable drivers to transform their car into a highly personal, controlled and relaxing sonic bubble.

Yet how could the car, once a noisy contraction, evolve into such a space for acoustic cocooning? This article studies the introduction of car radio and interior car sound design in Europe between the 1920s and the 1990s. The car radio's meaning shifted from an artifact that brought companionship to lonely drivers, to an instrument that helped drivers to mentally block out their fellows on the road. At the same time, listening to engine sounds changed from a drivers' skill to a practice drivers had to de-learn. Moreover, car sound construction shifted from reducing noise to creating target sounds for specific consumer groups.

This article employs three forms of cultural analysis to understand these shifts: an “archeology of corporate culturology,” the symbolism of sound, and Gerhard schulze's theory on the experience society. Finally, by analyzing the rise of acoustic cocooning in the car, it aims to contribute to the study of “techno-cocooning”: the use of technology for creating sensory privacy.     

基于Malmquist指数的客车企业效率研究

汽车行业是中国加入WTO后受冲击最大的行业之一。正确估计作为公共交通主要工具的客车企业的效率是研究、规划、调控该行业发展的重要依据。本文运用基于DEA模型的Malmquist研究了2002年到2005年中国客车类上市公司纯技术效率、规模效率、技术进步率和全要素生产率的变化。结果表明面对外资企业的冲击,多数企业的发展高于人们的预期,在激烈的竞争中保持住了竞争优势,并实现了一定程度的生产率提高,只是受发展环境的限制,提高速度低于国民经济增长速度。     

从环保角度分析燃气汽车的发展趋势

通过对汽车、能源、环境关系的论述,阐明了燃气汽车产生的原因、所具备的优缺点及其发展趋势,并对其推广条件及应注意的问题进行了说明。