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# Posted 12:03 AM by Ariel David Adesnik

BAGHDAD TRAFFIC REPORT: USA Today (link via KD) reports that increasing respect for traffic cops is an important sign of progress in Baghdad:

Adnan Kadhum of the Baghdad traffic police says he noticed the change about 10 days ago: The city's notoriously unruly drivers suddenly started obeying his commands. They stopped when he signaled for them to stop; they went when he signaled for them to go.

"Before, you found hardly anyone listening to you," the 27-year police force veteran says. Kadhum, 48, spent his days flailing around in 105-degree heat, sometimes waving his pistol in a futile attempt to make motorists follow his commands. "Now, by barely moving my hand, I get respect."

This article is actually from July 7th, so 10 days earlier would have been just around the time of the handover, give or take a day. Of course, that could just be a coincidence.

More importantly, does it really make sense to infer national trends from the behavior of crosstown traffic? I don't have a definitive answer to that question, but I can offer a theory and an anecdote. Thanks to Rudy Giuliani, most people are familiar with the broken windows theory of crime. Basically, it's the idea that crime expands exponentially when small crimes go unpunished.

Two summers ago, I was living in Argentina in the midst of that nation's worst economic crisis ever. Across the country, crime was spinning out of control. One afternoon, I was driving down a major thoroughfare in Buenos Aires with a friend. He casually ran a red light and explained to me that because the government had ruined everyone's life, he didn't feel compelled to obey traffic laws anymore.

The logic didn't make much sense to me, since running red lights in Argentina is an especially good way to get killed. (In a car crash. The death squads haven't been active for more than twenty years.) In contrast, I understood exactly why my friend ignored the currency trading laws Argentina had recently put on the books -- it was a great way to make a lot of money fast without much risk.

Conclusion: Traffic may not be rational, but it makes sense all the same.

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