William Phelps Eno. That’s a name you have never heard of, most likely, but it’s one that affects your daily life more than you realize. You see, Mr. Eno is the man most responsible for the way we use our automobiles on public roads. Eno is often referred to by historians as the “Father of Traffic Safety” for his innovative ideas on how to use vehicles and how those vehicles should interact with the public at large.

The mobile society brought about by the production of the automobile was not anything Eno would have imagined when he was born in 1858 in New York City–ironically one of the cities that would benefit most from his later innovations. His father was a well-to-do real estate investor in the city, and his mother was from an old wealthy New England family. As the child of this pair, Eno studied at Yale and had a wide range of interests. Having financial security allowed him the time to think about the issues of traffic in the city and how to solve those situations.

Actually, according to Eno, it wasn’t automobiles that first caused him to consider the issues surrounding traffic in New York City. One day, as a young man, he and his mother were caught in a traffic jam of horses and carriages and wagons. It was immediately clear to the young Eno that a solution needed to be enacted to alleviate the tangled traffic. He enjoyed order, Eno did, and he approached the problem from that angle. For him, the answer lay with establishing regulations for traffic and then instructing the law enforcement authorities on how to enforce those regulations. Thus, to him, the solution was one of clarification and education of both the public and the police. People should have easy and clear understanding of the regulations, and the police should know how to help them navigate those regulations.

Thus, in 1900, which really was before cars were the predominant mode of transportation in the city, Eno published his plan. He called it Reform in Our Street Traffic Urgently Needed. That led him to create the first traffic code for the city a few years later. No other city had such a code, so New York was ahead of the curve. That led him to be asked by other major international cities such as Paris and London to create similar plans for them as well.

One way streets? That was Eno. Clearly defined lanes? Yep, he did that. Pedestrian crossings marked out at intersections? Ditto. In fact, most of the things we take for granted in traffic organization today were from the mind of William Phelps Eno. One creation of his is omnipresent in Europe but rare in the United States: The roundabout or the traffic circle. Europe appreciates that they allow the rapid flow of traffic at intersections without the need for a traffic light, while Americans see them as confusing and dangerous. Statistically, they are much safer than traffic lights as Eno realized. The only ones most people know about in the US is Columbus Circle in New York City that he designed and had built or the one around the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France.

After a long and fulfilling life, Eno died in 1945. He was appropriately lauded as the creator of all things traffic. But there’s one interesting item about Eno that might surprise you.

Not only did the Father of Traffic Safety never own a car, but he also never learned to drive.