Traffic as Situated Interaction

Abstract

Roads are often crowded places which many people would like to use at the same time. We unpack the ways in which drivers coordinate their vehicles’ movements and how they come to agreement on the sharing of the road space. The drivers have to sort this out even though, they are confined within the shells of their vehicles, and often meet other drivers for only a short span of time. Obviously the availability of a set of formal traffic rules makes interaction easier. Furthermore, there are a number of informal rules, which in some sense prescribe how to behave given the shape of the roads and the relations between vehicles, and rules which draw on the identities of the drivers. The availability of several rule sets, and the possibility to interpret the context of a road setting in various ways, make misunderstanding of other drivers’ activities possible. Therefore, we cannot take rule following as an explanation as to why most of the time people manage to coordinate their movements, without crashing into each other. We need to investigate the details of how, e.g. traffic regulations, are actually used in naturally occurring interaction out on the streets. We introduce the notion of situated interaction to account for how agreements are negotiated as a local activity. Such negotiations must, of course, be finalized in seconds, since there is little room for more sustained forms of interaction. If situated interaction plays an important role in traffic it will have implications for how the information technology for coordination should be designed.