Washington D.C. serves as the capital of the United States. The name, District of Columbia honors Christopher Columbus, and the city’s better-known name of Washington, honors the first president. However, it once again ranked first in terms of dangerous driving. The probability of a traffic accident in Washington residents is 109.3% higher than the national average.

As a result, Washington D.C. is working to identify drivers with a history of breaking traffic rules, such as speeding and illegal parking, to send pointed message to warn them seriously of their risks of getting into a deadly crash.

City officials say they hope the pointed messages will deter dangerous road behaviors. “ Some drivers are putting others at serious risk with speeding and red-light running and we hope that this creative approach can gradually reduce serious injury and crashes.” said Jeff Melley, director of the city’s Department of Transportation.

Researchers have studied the relationship between repeated traffic offenders and serious crashes, with some data suggesting a strong connection between the two. That means, drivers with multiple dangerous road behaviors are more likely to be involved in crashes. A team from The Lab led by researchers from the MIT will create a campaign. “We will evaluate whether high-risk drivers who receive these messages have fewer dangerous road behaviors, compared to the group of high-risk drivers who do not receive the messages.”

City officials said the purpose of these pointed messages is to educate the high-risk drivers. Jeff said, “there is no punishment or fine attached to the message and the campaign is to use data to directly communicate with individual drivers.” So some questioned whether the message will work. Anyway, efficient measures begin with creative tryouts.

About a quarter of the world drives on the left, and the countries that do are mostly old British colonies (殖民地) like Australia , and Ireland. But Thailand, Indonesia and Japan also do so.

This strange quirk (奇事) puzzles the rest of the world; however, there is a perfectly good reason . Up to the late 1700’s , everybody travelled on the left side of the road because it’s the most sensible option for feudal (封建的), violent societies with mostly right-handed people. Soldiers with their swords under their right arm naturally passed on each other’s right, and if you passed a stranger on the road, you walked on the left to ensure that your protective sword arm was between yourself and him.

Revolutionary France, however, overturned this practice as part of its sweeping social rethink. A change was carried out all over continental Europe by Napoleon. It changed under Napoleon because he was left-handed. His armies had to march on the right so he could keep his sword arm between him and any opponent. From then on, any part of colonized by the French travelled on the right.

After the American Revolutionary War (1775—1783), the US became independent and decided to make traffic drive on the right in order to cast off all remaining links with its British colonial past. As America became the center of the car industry, if you wanted a good reliable vehicle, you bought American right-hand-drive cars. From then on, many countries changed out of necessity.

Today, the EU would like Britain to fall into line with the rest of Europe, but this is no longer possible. It would cost billions of pounds to change everything round. The last European country to change driving on the right was Sweden in 1967. While everyone was getting used to the new system, they paid more attention and took more care, resulting in a reduction of the number of road accidents.

There are many people you are well advised to treat kindly: Your child’s teacher, your husband or wife, your boss and so on.

Until now, that best-behavior-required list has not included your Uber（优步） driver, or taxi drivers. Old thinking: Hey, they’re here to serve me. I don’t have to make a special effort to be nice to them.

Dangerously wrong.

A recent New York Times story told the educative tale of a Uber passenger, Hussein Kanji, who says he’s really not sure how he made his driver angry. All he knows is that his driver-generated rating(评分) went way down and the wait for a Uber car became hours instead of minutes.

Be careful, Uberians: If you’re feeling angry when you get into the back seat and you give your driver the silent treatment, your reputation may get damaged in the driver-generated ratings. If you’re among the people described as “generally negative” by one Uber driver, watch out.

Uber isn’t the only front on this battlefield. The ability to rate someone’s service is one of the successes of the Internet. It helps everyone weed out people with bad attitudes and worse habits.

These ratings should cut both ways. A while back, the auction(竞买) site eBay made many of its sellers angry when it started preventing them from giving negative ratings to buyers. Until then, sellers and buyers had threatened each other with negative reviews. Too many negative reviews could get you thrown off.

Then eBay shifted the balance of power to buyers. Sellers can still write a bad comment, but the overall rating cannot be anything but positive. Thus eBay has become a place where all is for the best. Think positive!

We know that being nice to people all day can be exhausting. We’ve also seen people who shout at those who don’t measure up to their expectations for service.

Uber is reportedly about to spread worldwide. It is a welcome competitor because it fits the needs of customers in a new way. We know Uber is a two-way street. But drivers who get too picky may end up with no passengers.

Everyone, behave!