Best essay about walking this year: "People in cars killing and injuring people on foot," or the end of walking.

The essay is long but absolutely essential reading. All the bases are covered, so much so that I won't bother trying to encapsulate it. Just one pull.

Read it.

The end of walking, by Antonia Malchik (Aeon)

In Orwellian fashion, Americans have been stripped of the right to walk, challenging their humanity, freedom and health

For decades, Americans have been losing their ability, even their right, to walk. There are places in the United States – New York City, for example – where people walk as a matter of habit and lifestyle, commuting in ways familiar to residents of London or Paris. But there are vast blankets and folds of the country where the ability to walk – to open a door and step outside and go somewhere or nowhere without getting behind the wheel of a car – is a struggle, a fight. A risk.

In 2013 more than 4,700 pedestrians were killed, and an estimated 66,000 injured, in what the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration calls ‘traffic crashes’. That’s a bite-sized phrase for what is, essentially, people in cars killing and injuring people on foot.