Broken bones are easy to spot, and even internal bleeding injuries can be obvious to a medical professional. But victims of traffic don’t always spit blood and drag shattered limbs. And even the creators of traffic can suffer. A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine found that drivers stuck in traffic were 2.6 times more likely to suffer a heart attack within an hour than a control group.

Other medical studies detail more subtle insults to our bodies caused by traffic and lack of physical human mobility. Asthma occurs at soaring rates in children who live near freeways, and even nonasthmatic children may have impaired lung function. Obesity rates continue to rise, and with added pounds comes increased incidence of diabetes, heart disease, and musculoskeletal strain.

Even more subtle are the social effects. A 1960s study conducted by Donald Appleyard compared life on three streets in San Francisco that were similar except for traffic volume: One had light, a second moderate, and a third heavy traffic. Residents of the street with light traffic (2000 cars per day) reported having 3.0 friends and 6.3 acquaintances on their block, drawn from both sides of the street. Moderate street traffic (8000 cars per day) dwellers had 1.3 friends and 4.1 acquaintances, while people living on the heavy traffic street (16,000 cars per day) reported .09 friends and 3.1 acquaintances.

Typical quotes reflected these differences. From the light traffic street: “Everybody knows each other,” and “I feel my home extends to the whole block.” Heavy traffic: “It’s not a friendly street—no one offers help,” and “Noise from the street intrudes into my home.”

Far from visiting neighbors across the way, residents on Cesar Chavez Street near the 101 freeway ramps say they avoid using their own front rooms because of noise and pollution.

Appleyard’s son Bruce returned to this issue in 2005 with a paper that focused on how traffic affects child development. He compared cognitive maps drawn by children who either traveled around their neighborhoods on their own steam or were driven everywhere. He found that kids who see life only through the windshield drew maps that lacked connections between destinations. On the maps, one route leads from home to school, another from home to the store or a friend’s house. But links between school, store, and friend’s house are blank. Children who walked or bicycled understood their environment and could fill in connections between various locations.

“These examples show how neighborhood design . . . can affect children’s sense of place. As parents are forced to chauffeur their children throughout their childhood, children can become cognitively disconnected from their community,” Appleyard concluded. He added that children’s independence and ability to engage in spontaneous play are also harmed.

Public reaction to the consequences of traffic is often a resigned shrug, however, even for blatant physical harm. A report from San Francisco’s Department of Public Health in 2004 listed the leading causes of “premature mortality.” Violence caused 112 deaths in 2000-2001. Shootings and stabbings warrant headlines and hand-wringing. But nobody much notices traffic accidents, which accounted for 111 deaths that year.

Even the term accident is misleading. Having a heart attack at the wheel and crashing into a tree is an accident. Looking to the left and turning right into a crosswalk while someone is walking on the green is not an accident. Other crashes are the result of poor engineering and allowable speeds that are higher than is safe.

Rather than wagging fingers at individuals, public officials could find solutions to all these health issues through better planning and investment in public transit and safe sidewalks and bikeways. Yet another study found that residents of New York City who lived near shops and subways had significantly lower body mass index levels (a measure of weight in relation to height) than New Yorkers in more isolated residential areas.

Lead author Andrew Rundle, a doctor of public health, boiled down the reasons. “You’re not going to get off the couch to walk to the corner store if there’s no corner store to walk to,” he said.

Wheezing, waddling, and disoriented, we trudge to our premature heart attacks, bombarded with messages about how sexy and free we become behind the wheel. Our state and local governments rush to fix a freeway ramp at the same time they slash public transit funds and shy away from planning for walkable neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the feds buy up corn to keep future cars on the road and conduct a little war to feed the ones there now. Everybody suffers.

Contact Fran Taylor at ftaylor@cmp.com or 947-6497.

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