Today I walked to the coffee shop and grabbed a latte before class. I was walking the half mile over to school when I passed a gas station. A pickup truck was idling in the exit driveway; as I approached, I was watching the driver in an effort to make eye contact but he was looking the other way. I had to check out the traffic on the street, the same as he was, to make sure a gap wasn’t about to open and he was going to hit the gas right as I passed in front of him. The boulevard was crowded, so I figured I was safe, so I walked on in front of the grille.
There was a crack in the sidewalk! I didn’t notice it, because I was still watching the driver, still trying to win some eye contact to make sure I would be safe. I tripped on the crack in the concrete. My right shoulder banged into the hood of the idling truck, and my latte splashed all over the ground. I grabbed my empty cup and sheepishly walked over to the gas station’s trash can to discard it. I didn’t seek any eye contact with the driver; I was embarrassed about my fumble and just wanted to walk away.
As I reflected on the incident, I realized that I could have fallen onto the ground, not onto the truck. In the worst case scenario, I might have become incapacitated somehow and lain there completely unbeknownst to the unpatching driver. People do get run over by cars in this country. It happens every day.
The sidewalk was a hazard to pedestrians, but it was not repaired. If it was somehow hazardous to automobile traffic entering the gas station’s parking lot, it would surely be fixed very quickly lest they lose their business. I realized that the sidewalk there was engineered for people in cars, not people on foot. Moreover, I as a pedestrian was forced to adapt to the presence of the truck: the interest of my own safety demanded that I pay attention to the driver, the location of the truck, and the traffic in the street. I had to devote so much of my attention to these variables that I forgot to watch my step. The cost in my case was just a lost grande caffe latte, but it could have been worse.
My experience walking to school was adversely impacted by automobile traffic in more ways than that, however. Even if the sidewalk was optimized for pedestrian traffic and presented no tripping hazard; even if the driver saw me coming and showed me clearly that he would yield to my passing; even if I arrived at school unembarrassed and adequately caffeinated; I still had the experience of walking right in front of this 3000 pound machine with its engine spinning at 1000 revolutions per minute, spewing out harmful chemicals and particulates into the air a few yards from me, adjacent to this huge road with dozens of cars passing every second. What is the psychological effect of these huge machines milling about so close to you all of the time? Each one is like some great beast sprinting past you at a superhuman speed. Roaring loudly. It makes me feel vulnerable. It makes the street feel unwelcoming. If not consciously, then subconsciously.
A walkway could be some earthen path through a meadow, swept and raked and manicured by caring gardeners, with hummingbirds and bumblebees and clean air, with here a forest and there a meadow and yonder a brook, inviting pleasurable detours. No dream, no exaggeration. Normal, before the age of the automobile. Inevitable to return, if we value the human experience and engineer the built environment to reflect that. The automobile is a miraculous invention which has created trillions of dollars of values through the incredible speed, power, connection, and freedom that it brings to our society. But we need to realize the adverse effects it has in our cities, as well.
Civic Engineering 
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