Less intersections where cars can crash into pedestrians or other vehicles

I wish, just check Atlanta - winding stroads as far as the eye can see

Yes to all, especially the driver attention one.

I have two options when driving to work. One is shorter and takes straight level roads through the newest part of town.

The other way is slightly longer but it's a twisty hilly road through the countryside.

I take the longer route every single day unless it is actively snowing or something. And now that hybrid WFH is a common thing, I don't often drive in the snow.

I mean, you can organise grids to be more or less stroady, and if you have too much of this going - like you have a medieval street plan - you can get the opposite thing where cars are forced through areas only suited to pedestrians, and everyone has to flatten themselves against building walls to make room.

Where I'm from cities like Boston are the norm. When I was in a grid city for the first time, I immediately got lost on the roads because everything just looks the same.

On the other hand, Americans seem to have a more intuitive sense of the cardinal directions than Europeans do from my experience. Which makes sense if you're used to roads aligned with them.

As someone who drives through Boston often: it's the worst-planned city I've ever seen. I am fairly convinced that the underground tunnel system is actually creating an eldritch sigil of chaos (a la Good Omens), and it is not uncommon to encounter a seven-way intersection, where two of those ways are train lines, but aren't marked, so at night, you can accidentally find yourself on train tracks. It's like if someone bargained with the Fey to make a city.

I am familiar with Boston, and the 2 times I have driven in nyc it was SIGNIFICANTLY easier to navigate than Boston lol. NYC was at least partially thought out, Boston is what you get when your road planner is a 3 year old toddler who threw a hand full of spaghetti on a map and said theres your streets LOL. Possibly the most annoying city I have had the misfortune of navigating lol.

This guy yinzez

There weren't computers when NYC's grid was laid out either.