‘Door to Door,’ by Edward Humes

DOOR TO DOOR
The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation
By Edward Humes
372 pp. Harper/HarperCollins Publishers. $27.99.

In the 1920s, drivers plowed into oncoming traffic and bicyclists and trees just as they do now, but no one talked about ­automobile accidents. Back then, notes Edward Humes in “Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation,” these events were known as “motor killings.” And citizens were outraged. They rioted and demanded reforms. They staged “massive parades” in protest. It was the kind of civil unrest that would come to be associated with social injustice and the Vietnam War.

As odd as that may sound to us now, it makes every kind of sense. Annual highway fatalities in the United States outnumber annual combat deaths throughout the Vietnam War (as well as the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Korea). Cars currently kill 3,000 people every month. Humes compares the carnage to that of four airliners crashing every week — rarely making headlines or prompting investigations or fines or legal reforms.

America fell hard for cars. They were novel and exciting. They conveyed status and independence, and until relatively recently they got us where we wanted to go with minimum hassle and time. Cities fell in line, dispensing with sidewalks and abandoning public transit projects. (Los Angeles freeways were originally planned with rail lines on the meridians.) Even the justice system succumbed to the sway, confining pedestrians to crosswalks and letting drivers who mowed them down get off with fines and community service. The language itself evolved to absolve the reckless driver. The term “jaywalking” was coined for the crime of crossing a street where you felt like it. “Motor killings” became “fatal accidents.”

As Humes makes clear, it is rarely an accident. When drivers go off the road, 89 percent of the time it is because they’re distracted. (Interestingly, other passengers most often supply the distraction ­— 15 percent of the time versus 12 percent for smartphones. And 8 percent for “singing/moving to music.”) If they’re not distracted, chances are they’re drunk. During 2014, Humes notes, inebriates behind the wheel killed 12,000 people in the United States. Ebola? Two.

In the rare instances in which the car itself is to blame, lawsuits, headlines and recalls result. Why, as Humes puts it, has there “never been a recall aimed at fixing cars so drunks cannot start them, or so drivers cannot exceed the speed limit or to prevent cellphones from being used while cars are in motion,” especially given that the technology to do all of this has long existed? Employing any one element of that technology would, Humes says, prevent 30 deaths and 2,200 injuries every day.

Statistics are a powerful ally, and Humes gathers and wields them masterfully. By my count, 73 percent of the pages in this book contain a statistic. They range in severity from the number of pounds Humes has lost by walking his greyhounds (20) to the number of possible routes for a U.P.S. driver with 120 stops (6, 689, 502, 913, 449, 135, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000).

“Door to Door” covers more varied terrain than this review is making it sound. Four chapters focus on our overburdened ports and the huge global shipping lines they answer to. These sections I read with less enthusiasm, partly because for me, no one writing on marine shipping can ever match the heart and lyricism of Rose George’s “Ninety Percent of Everything.” Chapters on coffee and aluminum feel meandering — though perhaps only in comparison with the focus and heat of Humes’s car chapters. Taken as a whole, they are a manifesto for a new order. The future is driverless, and Google and Uber are already deep into it. I thrilled to Humes’s vision of the utopia that awaits us: driverless cars summoned with a smartphone app, the minutes or miles paid for with a simple subscription plan. It’s not only doable, it’s inevitable: efficient, nonlethal door-to-door transportation for all — including, not insignificantly, people with impaired vision or mobility.

Humes takes us for a ride near the Google campus. Alas, the same things that make a driverless car safe also make it dull: It never speeds, never crashes or careens (well, almost never), and it enables its occupants to read or nap. But the excitement level is also to some extent a product of the author’s style and ­choices. Scenes are set but never fully ­inhabited. We are there, yet always somehow a few car lengths away. At one point on the Google drive there’s a mention of the “red team,” staffers paid to drive erratically and throw up obstacles in an effort to flummox the vehicle. And I think: Why aren’t we out and about with those guys?

And while we’re at it, why no more than a passing mention of package-delivering drones? And can we please have more than one sentence on the elevated wooden bicycle highway meant to connect ­Pasadena and Los Angeles in the early 20th century? But that’s not fair criticism. That’s just me saying, Here’s how I’d have done it.

And if I’d done it, we would not have the important and assiduously researched work that we have here. The system by which we move our goods and ourselves is badly broken. It does not need fixing. It needs rethinking. Like “Silent Spring” and “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” “Door to Door” is a rallying point for culturewide change. The mind-set has already begun to shift. Humes’s tireless curation of figure and fact, his well-reasoned arguments and his uncluttered, well-ordered prose may turn the ship that’s just begun to budge.