10 ms·

Just ban cars. It's not that hard. We banned horses, why not cars?

by GoToRO 9y ago

dec0dedab0de 9y ago
when did horses get banned?
- GoToRO 9y ago
  Depends on your location. In my country they are banned on highways, national roads and cities or in other words in all those places in which cars rule.
  - gpvos 9y ago
    Well, in the Netherlands and I think most other European countries, they are banned on car-only roads (i.e., motorways and expressways; autosnelweg and autoweg in Dutch). Elsewhere, including cities, they are allowed.
- manarth 9y ago
  2007, in Romania [1][2]. More specifically, horse-drawn carts were banned. From what I can see, the movement to ban them stems from an argument that horse-drawn carts/carriages are a form of animal cruelty [3]. I haven't seen anything that singles out/bans horses (with riders, rather than carriages) though. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2013/02/14/the-romanian-horse-cart-ban-thats-probably-behind-europes-horse-meat-scandal/#3ad89e937d4f https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2013/02/14/the-ro... [2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1578965/Horses-left-to-starve-after-Romania-bans-carts.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1578965/Horses-lef... [3] https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-in-entertainment/horse-drawn-carriages/ https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-in-entertainment/horse-d...
nickrio 9y ago
I thought horses was banned because they ... produce some unwanted mass on the road which hard to clean? Cars on the other hand, don't do that at all. Maybe that's the reason why cars are not banned.
- alistairSH 9y ago
  Horse poop degrades fairly rapidly (relative to omnivore and carnivore excrement). Doesn't smell as bad either. Cars produce all sorts of chemical compounds that ruin the air we breath.
  - astrodust 9y ago
    No. It doesn't degrade rapidly. It stays there for weeks unless there's rain. It does smell bad. Hitting a fresh one is a cyclists worst nightmare. I'm not saying cars are innocent here, but at least they don't poop.
- bhouston 9y ago
  Non-electric cars will be banned in most inner cities probably within the decade because of their pollution, sort of a parallel with how horses were banned earlier.
  - astrodust 9y ago
    Horses were banned? Here you just need a horse-drawn carriage license, but good luck getting one.
- pjc50 9y ago
  Horses were never banned (except maybe locally), they're just far more expensive and difficult to run than cars.
- babyrainbow 9y ago
  Yes. But cars produce unwanted mess in atmosphere that in almost impossible to clean..
- viraptor 9y ago
  It was already addressed in other content that they're not banned everywhere, but additionally, the poop you mention is not a big problem. In many places horses in the cities are forced to wear horse-size napies which catch the poop.
corobo 9y ago
Not sure where you are but here in the UK it's quite legal to ride a horse or drive a horse with a carriage of some kind on the road. The carriage needs to be "road worthy" but aside from that you don't even need a license of any kind unless you're transporting passengers. It's just not very fast compared to modern cars and quite expensive so not as many people do it. Edit: Oh one minor mostly common sense note - You can't ride/drive horses on the motorway and probably shouldn't on faster roads or dual carriageways due to the rest of the traffic going far faster than you.
- GoToRO 9y ago
  In my country they are banned on highways, national roads, cities. I was referring to that. I think banning them on congested roads will increase the demand for public transport which is what we should have on those road anyway.
  - openasocket 9y ago
    You want to ban cars on congested roads? Isn't that a paradox? If cars are banned on a road then it won't be congested anymore, so cars will be allowed on it, then it will get congested so cars get banned ... in the end I think what you're suggesting is running around giving tickets to people in traffic jams. Also, in what country did they ban horses?
    - viraptor 9y ago
      That's taking the idea to absurd extreme. You don't flip-flop the law every day. London for example has a congestion zone around the main city, which involves multiple limits and in many places removed congestion. This doesn't mean those areas are free for all again - the zone remains to keep out / reduce the congestion which would otherwise come back.
      - openasocket 9y ago
        In my defense, the OP said "banning cars." In London to deal with congestion they basically just turn large sections of the city into a toll road. That's pretty different than "banning cars"
technofiend 9y ago
"We" did? Who is "we"? >"Every person having control or charge of a vehicle shall, whenever upon any way and approaching any horse, drive, manage, and control such vehicle in such a manner as to exercise every reasonable precaution to prevent the frightening of such horse, and to insure the safety and protection of any person riding or driving the same." That's the law (for instance) in New Hampshire. The same article (the very first link when I search for "horse street legal united states") http://cs.thehorse.com/blogs/horses-and-the-law/archive/2012/01/24/Rules-Of-The-Road.aspx http://cs.thehorse.com/blogs/horses-and-the-law/archive/2012... further states >Traffic laws in a few states, including Colorado, Michigan, and New Mexico, specifically state that horses have all the rights and obligations of other vehicles when they are being ridden or driven on a public highway. Everywhere else, except in states like Louisiana where it appears to be illegal to ride a horse on a paved road, riders and drivers probably enjoy similar rights and obligations by implication. >Some states prohibit specific conduct when riding on a highway: It is illegal to ride a horse at night in New Mexico; to cross bridges at a gait faster than a walk in Idaho, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania; to ride or drive a horse "recklessly" in Nevada; to race or run horses on a highway in Kentucky, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, or New Jersey; to ride on a levee in Kentucky; and to ride on interstate highways in several states. Horses should be ridden on the right-hand side of the road, going with the flow of traffic, almost everywhere except Colorado, where riders must ride on the left. Sorry but I don't think you know what you're talking about, you're not in the United States, or you failed to specify enough context so that in that limited situation your statement is true. At the very least you failed to make a simple Google search for a sweeping generalization that is demonstrably not true.
- GoToRO 9y ago
  Hold your horses! It's just a comment on internet and I didn't think I had to treat all edge cases :)) Also, if you don't have enough context for something it doesn't mean you should pick any random context...
  - technofiend 9y ago
    Without any context the entire world is your edge case, mate. Sorry if I'm being a bit pedantic but HN is not Reddit.
sillysaurus3 9y ago
Horses aren't banned. If you spend some time in a big city, they're everywhere. Police ride them, people ride them, people use them to pull carts and pull other people. The horses are always less useful than machines, but they exist.
profmonocle 9y ago
Horses declined after a better option - cars - were widely available and accepted. I'm all for coming up with a better solution, but if you ban cars before we have that solution you'll effectively shut down civilization in much of the developed world.
27182818284 9y ago
China doing a massive ban-change to vehicles wouldn't be a first. Friedman wrote about their policy shifts in Hot, Flat, and Crowded. China has implemented changes to vehicle emissions in just a few years that took the US decades (e.g. unleaded gas). So, okay, they won't ban cars outright, but it isn't impossible to imagine other scenarios that would be impossible to imagine the US doing in the same time period.

Just ban cars. It's not that hard. We banned horses, why not cars?

by GoToRO 9y ago

Just ban cars. It's not that hard. We banned horses, why not cars?

dec0dedab0de 9y ago

when did horses get banned?

GoToRO 9y ago
Depends on your location. In my country they are banned on highways, national roads and cities or in other words in all those places in which cars rule.
- gpvos 9y ago
  Well, in the Netherlands and I think most other European countries, they are banned on car-only roads (i.e., motorways and expressways; autosnelweg and autoweg in Dutch). Elsewhere, including cities, they are allowed.
manarth 9y ago
2007, in Romania [1][2]. More specifically, horse-drawn carts were banned. From what I can see, the movement to ban them stems from an argument that horse-drawn carts/carriages are a form of animal cruelty [3]. I haven't seen anything that singles out/bans horses (with riders, rather than carriages) though. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2013/02/14/the-romanian-horse-cart-ban-thats-probably-behind-europes-horse-meat-scandal/#3ad89e937d4f https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2013/02/14/the-ro... [2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1578965/Horses-left-to-starve-after-Romania-bans-carts.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1578965/Horses-lef... [3] https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-in-entertainment/horse-drawn-carriages/ https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-in-entertainment/horse-d...

nickrio 9y ago

I thought horses was banned because they ... produce some unwanted mass on the road which hard to clean? Cars on the other hand, don't do that at all. Maybe that's the reason why cars are not banned.

alistairSH 9y ago
Horse poop degrades fairly rapidly (relative to omnivore and carnivore excrement). Doesn't smell as bad either. Cars produce all sorts of chemical compounds that ruin the air we breath.
- astrodust 9y ago
  No. It doesn't degrade rapidly. It stays there for weeks unless there's rain. It does smell bad. Hitting a fresh one is a cyclists worst nightmare. I'm not saying cars are innocent here, but at least they don't poop.
bhouston 9y ago
Non-electric cars will be banned in most inner cities probably within the decade because of their pollution, sort of a parallel with how horses were banned earlier.
- astrodust 9y ago
  Horses were banned? Here you just need a horse-drawn carriage license, but good luck getting one.
pjc50 9y ago
Horses were never banned (except maybe locally), they're just far more expensive and difficult to run than cars.
babyrainbow 9y ago
Yes. But cars produce unwanted mess in atmosphere that in almost impossible to clean..
viraptor 9y ago
It was already addressed in other content that they're not banned everywhere, but additionally, the poop you mention is not a big problem. In many places horses in the cities are forced to wear horse-size napies which catch the poop.

corobo 9y ago

Not sure where you are but here in the UK it's quite legal to ride a horse or drive a horse with a carriage of some kind on the road. The carriage needs to be "road worthy" but aside from that you don't even need a license of any kind unless you're transporting passengers. It's just not very fast compared to modern cars and quite expensive so not as many people do it. Edit: Oh one minor mostly common sense note - You can't ride/drive horses on the motorway and probably shouldn't on faster roads or dual carriageways due to the rest of the traffic going far faster than you.

GoToRO 9y ago
In my country they are banned on highways, national roads, cities. I was referring to that. I think banning them on congested roads will increase the demand for public transport which is what we should have on those road anyway.
- openasocket 9y ago
  You want to ban cars on congested roads? Isn't that a paradox? If cars are banned on a road then it won't be congested anymore, so cars will be allowed on it, then it will get congested so cars get banned ... in the end I think what you're suggesting is running around giving tickets to people in traffic jams. Also, in what country did they ban horses?
  - viraptor 9y ago
    That's taking the idea to absurd extreme. You don't flip-flop the law every day. London for example has a congestion zone around the main city, which involves multiple limits and in many places removed congestion. This doesn't mean those areas are free for all again - the zone remains to keep out / reduce the congestion which would otherwise come back.
    - openasocket 9y ago
      In my defense, the OP said "banning cars." In London to deal with congestion they basically just turn large sections of the city into a toll road. That's pretty different than "banning cars"

technofiend 9y ago

"We" did? Who is "we"? >"Every person having control or charge of a vehicle shall, whenever upon any way and approaching any horse, drive, manage, and control such vehicle in such a manner as to exercise every reasonable precaution to prevent the frightening of such horse, and to insure the safety and protection of any person riding or driving the same." That's the law (for instance) in New Hampshire. The same article (the very first link when I search for "horse street legal united states") http://cs.thehorse.com/blogs/horses-and-the-law/archive/2012/01/24/Rules-Of-The-Road.aspx http://cs.thehorse.com/blogs/horses-and-the-law/archive/2012... further states >Traffic laws in a few states, including Colorado, Michigan, and New Mexico, specifically state that horses have all the rights and obligations of other vehicles when they are being ridden or driven on a public highway. Everywhere else, except in states like Louisiana where it appears to be illegal to ride a horse on a paved road, riders and drivers probably enjoy similar rights and obligations by implication. >Some states prohibit specific conduct when riding on a highway: It is illegal to ride a horse at night in New Mexico; to cross bridges at a gait faster than a walk in Idaho, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania; to ride or drive a horse "recklessly" in Nevada; to race or run horses on a highway in Kentucky, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, or New Jersey; to ride on a levee in Kentucky; and to ride on interstate highways in several states. Horses should be ridden on the right-hand side of the road, going with the flow of traffic, almost everywhere except Colorado, where riders must ride on the left. Sorry but I don't think you know what you're talking about, you're not in the United States, or you failed to specify enough context so that in that limited situation your statement is true. At the very least you failed to make a simple Google search for a sweeping generalization that is demonstrably not true.

GoToRO 9y ago
Hold your horses! It's just a comment on internet and I didn't think I had to treat all edge cases :)) Also, if you don't have enough context for something it doesn't mean you should pick any random context...
- technofiend 9y ago
  Without any context the entire world is your edge case, mate. Sorry if I'm being a bit pedantic but HN is not Reddit.

sillysaurus3 9y ago

Horses aren't banned. If you spend some time in a big city, they're everywhere. Police ride them, people ride them, people use them to pull carts and pull other people. The horses are always less useful than machines, but they exist.

profmonocle 9y ago

Horses declined after a better option - cars - were widely available and accepted. I'm all for coming up with a better solution, but if you ban cars before we have that solution you'll effectively shut down civilization in much of the developed world.

27182818284 9y ago

China doing a massive ban-change to vehicles wouldn't be a first. Friedman wrote about their policy shifts in Hot, Flat, and Crowded. China has implemented changes to vehicle emissions in just a few years that took the US decades (e.g. unleaded gas). So, okay, they won't ban cars outright, but it isn't impossible to imagine other scenarios that would be impossible to imagine the US doing in the same time period.