Entries in Who taught you to drive? (1)
AND NOW, IN THE “ANY PUBLICITY IS GOOD PUBLICITY” DEPARTMENT….
In which the DLA Research staff feels unappreciated and misunderstood, but learns a valuable lesson about the power of printed word!
Things got a little heated last week here at the DrivingLikeAss Labs following the publication of Pete DeMarco’s otherwise laudatory column, Who Taught YOU to Drive? ,in the March 30 Boston Globe. The research staff grumbled through DeMarco’s description of their efforts to bring academic rigor to the study of Boston driving behavior as “tongue-in-cheek” and “under the guise of.” They were even willing to let the “you might actually believe them” crack slip. But what really got them steamed were the quotes attributed to DLA’s spokesperson, Jonathan Dower, in which he took single-handed and unabashed credit for everything from DLA’s inception and mission to the actual research itself.
“It’s bad enough that he makes himself look like the DLA braintrust,,” crabbed one researcher, “but you woulda thought he could throw the real workers a bone….you know, like mentioning the hours we spend doing exit interviews at the RMV, which, by the way, he made us do on our lunch breaks!”