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Something that’s normalized that’s actually super weird: the amount of time dedicated on the radio to talk about traffic jams. Coming just after the weather forecast, which is relevant for everyone, we hear about car traffic which impacts a small minority of people. But the placement, plus the regularity of it, gives the impression that it’s a high interest item.
Train schedules or pedestrian flows in the high street never get this treatment. Yet they impact more people.
It creates a sense of urgency for one problem (“so much traffic all the time”) but not others (“trains are crowded, sidewalks are too narrow”).
#FBPE @juliette I have occasionally found it useful. Once upon a time, decades ago, when I would occasionally hang around London, it was quite useful to tune in to the Eye in the Sky on Crapital Radio.
They would announce that, say, Hangar Lane was completely solid. So we'd change our planned route and aim directly for Hangar Lane in the expectation, usually fulfilled, that everybody else, having heard that, would be avoiding it, so it would be empty by the time we got there.
@TimWardCam @juliette I remember both BBC and ILR (commercial radio) giving both traffic news for drivers and warnings of disruption on trains, metro services etc
I only started driving in middle age, but was interested in radio way before then, and have worked on both tech and production side of small radio stations).
Regular traffic news on radio is also due to most cars having a receiver, and since 1990s RDS making it easy to auto tune this receiver to the broadcast..
@TimWardCam @juliette in fact here in Britain, cost cutting amongst broadcasters and the trend for individuals to now have their own devices which can provide real time travel news (for any mode of transport) has led to radio travel news becoming increasingly rare, and when it does get broadcast its often outdated and from an area many km away (also due to unusual frequency allocations in UK which give way more space to the BBC above all other broadcasters)
@TimWardCam @juliette they don't need the aircraft nowadays, INRIX and others such as TomTom, Here etc will provide the real time feed from traffic sensors, CCTV cameras feeding (basic) AI and other devices, but that still costs more money than the broadcasters want to pay these days, and they can't be as up to date as real time sources feeding LTE devices (the same can just as well work for public transport - my local bus company has a very good real time app)
@TimWardCam @juliette its still occasionally done by the BBC. The commercial stations seem to have mostly given up with these traffic reports. The RDS function still exists, even the mini pirate transmitter I built last year will do it (although I've not tried it out as thats poking the bear further with regards to Ofcom, who I need to stay on the right side of at this time 
)