North american street and road design are not great at preventing automobile accidents due to their wide designs, high speed limits, and poor road hierarchy uses. The roads are especially unsafe for anyone outside of a car like pedestrians and cyclists. If this was truly done for safety there would be more traffic calming, safer pedestrian crossing and protected bike lanes. Cars are the most subsidized method of transit in North America and the roads/streets are designed to move as many cars as fast as possible.

Lawmakers also sat idly by while big auto corporations bought street car companies, ripped out the street cars, replaced them with buses, and eventually cancelled the bus services as they were now stuck in the traffic created by destroying the street cars and promoting more people to drive. Lawmakers also decided that dense downtown areas should be destroying their buildings to meet parking minimums that were based on very little real data. Sure lawmakers didn’t force you to buy a car, but they certainly contributed to the erosion of walkability and transit as well as promoted car centric design (suburbs, strip malls, parking minimums).