4. Billboards²¹Change the Way You Drive

Distracted driving is dangerous driving. That’s why you can’t talk on your phone and drive at the same time in many places. There’s one age-old highway occupant that’s causing all sorts of traffic problems as well: the billboard. Studies at the Institute for Road Safety Research in the Netherlands have found that, unsurprisingly, drivers spend less time paying attention to the road and other drivers when there are billboards along the roads.

They also found that most people are more capable of remembering the billboards they passed than the traffic signs they just saw. Instances of veering into another lane, misjudging distances between vehicles, and making dangerous decisions all increase when there are billboards present²². The problem is getting even worse with the advent of digital billboards.

According to researchers at the University of Granada, the last billboard you see before going through a yellow light has a measured impact on your decision to stop or keep going. People who were exposed to billboards and other advertisements displaying negative subject matters, such as accidents or abuse, were more likely to stop at the yellow light. Cheerful, happy billboards and images, on the other hand, made people more likely to run the light.

5. Why More Lanes Don’t Mean Less Traffic

The sight of a new lane being added to a perpetually congested highway usually evokes two emotions: annoyance at the current delay and hope that traffic will decrease after the road is finished.²³Unfortunately, it never, ever works that way. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania looked at the correlation²⁴between expanding roads and the amount of traffic on those roads over a 10-year period and found that the amount of traffic actually went up following the addition of new roads.

The prevailing²⁵theory regarding this strange phenomenon is that when it’s easier to travel, people travel more. Of course, the reverse is also true. If you eliminate²⁶lanes of traffic or side streets, traffic will adjust to become no better or worse than it was before. They’ve tried it in notoriously²⁷congested cities like Paris and San Francisco.

Studies are now suggesting that the trick isn’t to make roads more available but to make them a privilege²⁸to use. Some cities, like London, are doing just that by charging a fee to use their roads, and it’s working. People will combine trips, turn to mass transit²⁹, or choose different modes of transportation, like biking or walking, if they have to pay to use the roads.

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21. billboard: 廣告牌，布告板。

22. 當路上有廣告牌時，人們變換車道、錯誤判斷車距以及做出危險決定的例子屢見不鮮。veer: 轉向。

23. 在一直都擁堵的高速公路上修建新車道，人們對此通常會產生兩種情感：一是反感目前的交通堵塞，二是希望道路修好后，交通能有所緩解。perpetually: 永久地；congested: 擁堵的；annoyance: 反感。

24. correlation: 關聯。

25. prevailing: 普遍的。

26. eliminate: 消除。

27. notoriously: 惡名昭彰地。

28. privilege: 特權。

29. mass transit: 公共交通。

（來源：英語學習雜志 編輯：Zoe）