Albert, the choice of preposition is usually related to the words before, rather than after the preposition. “Far from” is a fixed expression. Also, “from” usually refers to a physical relationship. In the second case, we could indeed use “from traffic”, but the meaning would not be exactly the same. In “the noise of traffic”, “of” is not indicating a physical relationship, but merely turning “traffic” into a modifier of “noise” — we could also say “the traffic noise”. In fact, I highly recommend my Slavic-speaking students practice using constructions such as “traffic noise”, precisely because it improves their fluency by allowing them not to worry about the preposition.

Hello! It's an example of L1 intervention. In Russian we have the same preposition in both cases, but in English these situations are seen differently. Of is used to show possession, belonging, or origin (принадлежность, шум от чего? от трафика). From is used to show the distance between two places (место, столик где? далеко от улицы).

Albert, Phil has answered your question exceptionally well, and I can add very little to his explanation. Perhaps I would have said, 'we chose a table ....', but that is not what you were asking about.

Sometimes you shouldn't listen to your mother tongue, Russian. Because prepositions are very different across the languages sometimes even American/ English: on a short notice🇺🇲/at a short notice🇬🇧 Just focus on the preposition in the destination language. Prepositions are hard sometimes and sometimes they are part of a phrase or a two-part vebs: to put up with someone = to tolerate Hope it helped!