Book Review: Killed By A Traffic Engineer by Wes Marshall

Question Everything. Including This Book. This is a book about transportation engineering written by an engineer and professor... who late in the book reveals himself as rather anti-car (though it becomes more and more clear the further you get into the text, before Marshall effectively outright says it), including some recommendations that get rather exteme, but which your mileage will absolutely vary on.

Written almost in a novel-ish style with short, punchy chapters that end on a leading thought/ statement, this isn't your typical nonfiction read... but it also isn't a Jeremy Robinson balls to the wall scifi action thriller either. Still, a writing style that will be more approachable for many readers... and quite annoying for others.

I read this mostly on my walks the back part of August 2026 + while driving to and near Universal Orlando for Halloween Horror Nights, so I can't speak to the length of its bibliography as I normally would. Admittedly I reached for this one after finishing Paved Paradise by Henry Grabar and then Arbitrary Lines by M. Nolan Gray... so I was on a bit of a theme for these walks... which happened to be along the side of a major six lane divided boulevard in Jacksonville, Florida where the posted speed limit is 45mph and yet cars routinely go quite a bit faster than that. Which is actually something Marshall discusses quite heavily in this text, how that exact problem arises... and some things traffic engineers could do to remediate it. There again, his suggestions... well, even ignoring how extreme they can be, will they actually *work* in this particular neighborhood as it is built? I very much doubt it, which is why I titled the review as I did.

Thus, the star deduction is rather simply because even acknowledging Marshall's professional credentials as an engineer and professor, I happen to be a (software) engineer as well and can see quite a few blind spots here where Marshall gets a touch dogmatic (some may claim more than a touch). Even as someone who agrees with him at least in part and happens to think that every single person employed by the Florida Department of Transporation as I write this review should be immediately fired over their obsession with Deadly Diamond interchanges (such as the one currently under construction at the I-4 and Sand Lake Drive intersection near Universal Orlando), in focusing more explicitly on non-car recommendations, Marshall really does get just a touch too much into his own personal preferences... even as his larger points about the need for more explicit safety requirements, *actual* mandatory *requirements*, and questioning the "best practices" and "traditions" (to use phrases describing similar "passed down knowledge" from other domains) are truly spot on and desperately needed.

Ultimately this is effectively a traffic engineering version of Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola, wherein an insider exposes the crumbling or even barely existent foundations of a given field and how we got to our present state, and for that premise in particular Marshall does a fantastic job here that demands that more people read, understand, and *question* everything he writes here.

Very much recommended.

This review of Killed By A Traffic Engineer by Wes Marshall was originally written on September 9, 2026.