I completely agree. It's sad that we've let cars completely take over in detriment of quality of life.

I worked on this set of visualizations on traffic in the center of Madrid a few years ago: http://trsp.net/cow

I found the numbers stunning. Some avenues had an average of 100k vehicles driving through daily.

I've since moved to San Francisco, and find that traffic in US cities is less painful, the cities' grids and sidewalks are better prepared. But still, it's ridiculous how much freedom cars are given. A few months ago traffic in Valencia St, one of the nicest streets in the Mission, was cut off, and it was bliss to take a walk there, even though the street was super crowded. At least some streets should always be traffic free, I dont think it's that much effort to ask, and the benefits in quality of living are tremendous.