More transport and related collective nouns
- a chain of escalators
- a clutch of shops
- a condescension of mansplainers
- a correction of pedants
- a dash of commuters
- a grift of billionaires
- a kindness of nurses
- a panel of experts
- a raft of enhancements
- a snarl of traffic
- a swarm of fare inspectors
- a tranche of documents
Interesting new transport terms & phrases
- cager – term for vehicle drivers stuck in their metal cages, often in traffic jams, frustrated and angry. Like the Smashing Pumpkins lyric ‘Despite all my rage/I’m still just a rat in a cage’.
- carsplaining – urban car based mobility and ‘personal’ safety explained by someone who never uses public transport or a bike, and walks only to get to their car.
- Chevrolegs – positive meaning: a cool way to say walking, as in 'Shall we take the Chevrolegs?' Negative meaning: corporations will find a way to make people pay to walk (like how water has been privatised and commoditised), most likely to also make space for delivery robots.
- decorative explosives – fireworks.
- deliverista – Spanish for deliveryman, and used in the US by Anglos as well as the term for (often Mexican or Puerto Rican) people that deliver meals by scooters, e-bikes, and other micromobility devices.
- grippage –internal TfL term for the things that passengers hold on to (not 'handrails').
- nerd-sightedness – the inability to see beyond a technology's interesting technical aspects, especially ethical and business implications.
- Recombobulation area – the space after airport security screening to put x-ray’d items back in pockets, laptop into carry on, shoes on, etc. Ideally this would be a pleasant expanse with comfortable upholstered chairs, soft lighting and noise-absorbing carpets to help passengers find their sense of peace and calm after the chaotic stress of having their belongings spread over plastic tubs and often out of sight whilst they are magnetically frisked. Instead it is typically a few scattered cheap chairs and no handrails on the walls to help the elderly and mobility challenged to steady themselves to put their shoes back on.
Fallacy of Composition
The principle that what is true for one individual's behaviour is not necessarily true when everyone acts that way. For instance, car driving – it doesn’t scale endlessly. On Demand transit doesn’t scale well either.
Reverse Network Effect
Additional cars and trucks diminish the utility of the road network, so growing use cannibalises their own value at the same time as destroying the utility of other transport modes. Consider buses stuck in traffic, and much more serious, the killed and seriously injured pedestrians and cyclists in motor vehicle accidents.
Heinrich Triangle Accident Theory
Heinrich proposed that, for every major injury, loss or event, there are 29 minor and 300 no-injury accidents, losses, or events. To reduce a major risk, it is incumbent to investigate and eliminate the greater number of minor and no-injury accidents or losses. Don’t just look at the tip of the iceberg, think about what’s below the surface. Heinrich formulated his theory in 1931: it was verified and revised by Frank Bird in the 1970s based on insurance company claim data.
Chesterton’s Fence
Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put up in the first place, lest you invite in a raft of problems that had previously been solved. Like public health regulations.
Cunningham's Law
The best and quickest way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question: it's to post the wrong answer. People can’t resist correcting others – it brings out the inner pedantic that few can resist.
Where retired transport goes to die
- aircraft – boneyard
- ships – breakers
- locomotives – smelter
- cars and lorries – wreckers
- trams and streetcars – ocean
- trains – the North of England
Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect
Describes the tendency of people to trust news articles on topics they are not knowledgeable about, even though such people often recognise inaccuracies in other news reports on issues they know well.
Erwin Knoll's Law of Media Accuracy
Similar to the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect (qv), Knoll’s Law states: "Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge."
Barnum Effect
This is the psychological phenomenon whereby individuals give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality supposedly tailored specifically to them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people.
Horns Effect
The tendency for errors in one area (eg grammar) to affect our perceptions of a person or company in an unrelated area (eg product quality).
Halo Effect
Contrarily, this is a positive trait in one area that improves perception of an unrelated one. So a witty piece of copy or a beautifully designed logo does more than catch people's attention: it creates a positive set of expectations even in completely unrelated areas.
Conscious philosophy is a weapon.
Fin.
