Author: Milad Haghani, Associate Professor & Principal Fellow in Urban Risk & Resilience, The University of Melbourne

In Australia, fatal road crashes are climbing again, especially since the pandemic, and despite years of attempts to reduce road trauma, the numbers remain stubbornly high. Strategies to reduce the road toll have largely focused on speeding, distractions and enforcement gaps, such as roadside drug testing. But hidden in these statistics is a lesser-known, deeply troubling reality: some of these crashes are not unintentional at all. A difficult area to explore A portion of road fatalities each year are deaths by suicide. For some, cars and trucks are not just modes of transport – they become a means to intentionally…

In 1972, the US meteorologist Edward Lorenz asked a now-famous question: Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? Over the next 50 years, the so-called “butterfly effect” captivated the public imagination. It has appeared in movies, books, motivational and inspirational speeches, and even casual conversation. The image of the tiny flapping butterfly has come to stand for the outsized impact of small actions, or even the inherent unpredictability of life itself. But what was Lorenz – who is now remembered as the founder of the branch of mathematics called chaos theory –…