Streets are safer, neighborhoods are more vital, and people are healthier and happier all across North America now that many communities have broken their dependence on automobiles. There are many explanations for this surprising turnaround, but a lot of the credit goes to members of an organization steeped in secrecy that was founded late last year.

"It's not caffeine we're addicted to," Bill shrieked, "it's speeding traffic!"

Auto Addicts Anonymous is a loose network of real estate developers, traffic engineers, public officials, auto industry employees, used car salesmen and others who have come to see that traffic had become unmanageable in American life and that as a society we were powerless to stop the damage that speeding cars and wider roads were inflicting on American families and communities.

Known as AAA, this new 12-step group's membership has skyrocketed to an estimated ten million people meeting in coffee shops, church basements and abandoned gas stations each week. It is not to be confused with the American Automobile Association, however nearly all the top brass of that organization have joined.

The origins of AAA go back to September, 2005 at a national conference about the next generation of urban freeways held in Motopia, Ohio, a suburb of Akron. Two attendees left early from a presentation about how to eliminate public participation from public hearings in search of a coffee fix. They attempted to reach a Starbucks they spotted across the street, but 16 lanes of roaring traffic made it impossible to get there.

They wound up instead at the hotel bar, where Bill W., a traffic engineer from New Jersey, picked a brochure off the table about Context Sensitive Solutions, which proposed ideas to ensure that road projects did not adversely affect surrounding communities. The brochure had been left behind from a workshop for local citizens concerned that Motopia had the highest childhood obesity rates in the country that had been held at the same hotel a day earlier by Project for Public Spaces transportation specialists David Burwell, Andy Wiley-Schwartz and Juliette Michaelson.

Thumbing through the brochure, Bill suddenly hollered "a-ha" so loudly that it nearly knocked his companion Dr. Bob, the Exxon Distinguished Professor of Transportation Studies at Wayne State University, off his chair. "It's not caffeine we're addicted to," Bill shrieked, "it's speeding traffic!" Several DOT officials from New Hampshire at the next table soon joined them and the group talked about Context Sensitive Solutions through the rest of the afternoon and all through the evening.

Returning home to their jobs, they found they could not get the idea of Context Sensitive Solutions out of their minds; indeed, they were talking up the idea to their colleagues and anyone else who would listen. Each of them formed weekly discussion groups, drawing a wide range of people involved with highway construction and suburban development who came together to share their sad stories of open spaces destroyed and neighborhoods ripped apart. These meetings, which participants find essential in helping them realize there is more to life than just driving, spread like wildfire throughout the U.S. and Canada, with over 800,000 weekly gatherings now held.

The movement's phenomenal growth is due in part to its popular preventive road rage interventions, which involve setting up stress reduction centers on downtown main streets near interstate exits. Harried drivers turn off the highway in huge numbers at the promise of backrubs, friendly conversation, and a chance to stretch their legs. Once the drivers are out of their cars and relaxed, they often acquire a new appreciation for strolling on the sidewalks of a lively, pedestrian-friendly neighborhood. Today there are more than 10,000,000 members, and many of the participants have taken a key role in helping free their communities from dominance by the auto.