One of the serious risks of city living are other drivers. Although

our brains have long been hardwired to fear snakes and spiders, they
are remarkably less attuned to the dangers of two-ton vehicles.
Instead of dreaming about things that slither in the night, we really
should be having nightmares about Yellow Cab, but the Freudians
wouldn’t have nearly as much fun. Two years ago, my seventy-five-
year-old father was walking to work in downtown Silver Spring,
Maryland, when he was struck by a car traveling 35 miles per hour.
The accident was probably a combination of inattentive walking and
inattentive driving, although my father was found solely at fault
because he wasn’t in the crosswalk.