The following is my Grenoble Life column from The Anglophones (of Grenoble and Lyon, France), May-June, 2002:

One of the most charming things about this city for me is the tram tracks running right through the middle of town. For uninitiated readers, they come in from the western suburb of Fontaine, snake around through Place de la Gare, continue through a large pedestrian square in the heart of the city (it’s named rue Félix Poulat but is very much a square; go figure), and amble towards either the campus or the southern suburbs. The former extension meanders along Place Notre Dame, slicing through a sheet of smooth, faded-maroon cobblestones that, if you didn’t know better, you’d think were yours alone to stroll on.

All along these more than 12 miles of track, which is mostly embedded in the street– which, in the old city, is also the sidewalk– automobiles drive right over the rails. (They don’t always cross perpendicularly to them, but little is perpendicular here in Europe.) And yet, there is not a single barrier as you’d find at grade crossings for trains. The tram, for all intents and purposes, is just another vehicle when crossing cars’ paths, and just another pedestrian– albeit a big, scary, light blue and grey one with powerful motors– when excusing itself through helter-skelter swarms of people.

The tram and the pedestrian seem to coexist peacefully. (Indeed, the pedestrian sometimes takes the tram.) The tram driver pulls up slowly to the platform when there are a lot of people on it. He (or she) sounds his bell when pulling away. He advances gingerly through the pedestrian areas. He looks out for the pedestrian.

The pedestrian leaves at least a couple sixteenths of an inch between himself and the tram when it comes in to the stop. He leaves at least a few feet when crossing in front of it while it is moving. He may not pay the tram much mind in his capacity as a walker (nobody runs here), but he watches out for it as sufficiently as he feels he needs to.

For the French, this level of comfort is normal. Indeed, I have never seen a single person hit by a tram. For an American, on the other hand, this level of comfort is frightful. He or she might physically recoil in shock upon first seeing it.

For me, with a foot in each of these views, in each of these cultures, this level of comfort is curious. All of these people risk getting killed; and yet, they walk past and on unscathed. My mom would have reprimanded me if I walked as a kid the way these people do. But the fact of the matter is, they’re not getting hit. They greatly risk getting hit. All the time. But I have never seen contact made.

France, it has by now become clear to me, is not, like in the U.S., about living your life erring on the side of caution. It’s about living your life. It’s about joy as a mindset and an endgoal, precaution be darned.

In the United States, we’re all about caution as a forethought. We have smoke detectors. We have no-fat frozen yogurt. We have a federally-mandated minimum age for drinking and, in theory at least, card with an iron fist. We don’t allow a sitting president and vice president to run against each other in an election. In France, the name of the game is to come as close as possible to the purported maladies or limits of social acceptability that the Americans shy away from antagonizing, toe the line, and, if it works, push the line. Jump curbs with reckless abandon; the tire has survived it before. Ignore the no-smoking signs; the worst repercussion, if there were to be one, would be a gentle reproach. Put your piece of bread on the tablecloth, rather than on your plate; germs are not a quotidian concern (i.e., you feel fine), and so, why worry about them?

Returning to the transportation theme, consider the Paris Métro. Car doors oftentimes open at least a couple of seconds before the train comes to a complete stop. You can jump out of the train with inertia to run (though you wouldn’t, as no one runs in France) or, by the same token, inertia to trip and fall. In New York’s subway, once in a blue moon will the doors open a fraction of a second before the car stops. Sometimes you even have to wait several seconds. (What is the conductor doing?)

But let’s broaden the scope of this outside Franco-American. Take, for instance, London: The old-style double-decker buses with the open doorway in the back (which, sadly, are being phased out in favor of the two-closed-door model, which allows the driver to do double-duty by collecting money) let you jump on or off the bus while it’s moving. As a Londoner tells me, "I do this all the time in London!!!" Doors of Montreal’s subway, like those of Paris’s, open just before the train stops. In the Tokyo metropolitan area, it had long been accepted practice to deal with rush-hour crowds through simple brute force: Oshiya would literally put their backs into stuffing passengers into crowded commuter trains. (By the way, just try to translate "commuter" into French.) In the U.S., I just don’t see the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation allowing any of these things.

Perhaps for the French, there’s just no beauty in safety. It inhibits savoir-faire, savoir-vivre, or rather, letting them show. You put down your cellular phone when driving past the police so that, well, the police won’t see you. Otherwise, you know what you’re doing. You wear a bike helmet if you’re in the Tour de France or are a child– under the watchful eye of the entire world (heavily influenced by you-know-who) or not mature enough to be careful enough. You don’t with your friends, because you’re mature enough and have savoir-vivre, and besides, everyone else is doing it, so the police aren’t likely to single you out. And besides, the police don’t care.

You walk brashly, carelessly, without a care across the tram tracks on rue Félix Poulat or in Place Notre Dame, because you have savoir-faire and you’re with your friends and everyone else is doing it, anyway, and it’s not against the law and it’s a beautiful day and it’s the responsibility of the tram driver, in his stodgy, grey, tweed jacket to watch out for you. And he will, because it’s your safety that’s at stake.

He may come close; but contact won’t be made. You know this full well.

At the end of the day, though, would we be better off? In 1999, for every passenger that traveled one mile on the respective national rail networks (this is called, logically, a "passenger-mile"), France had more than 6,000 times the number of accidents at grade crossings. We may be the odd country out, not as beautiful as France and lacking savoir-faire and savoir-vivre, but the figures tell the story. I think that in the end, it’s simply up to each of us to decide which side of caution to err on– and just how prudently to cross the tram tracks.