7 ms·

I personally love driving - but I work from home. Nothing makes me happier than remote starting my F150 and hearing its V8 roar from inside the house through s

I personally love driving - but I work from home. Nothing makes me happier than remote starting my F150 and hearing its V8 roar from inside the house through several walls/doors. Have kids? When your kid spikes a fever at 1am and you have no car and you need to go buy some children’s ibuprofen, what are you going to do? I can run to my local 24/7 grocer or Walmart and be back in 10 minutes flat. My son had a bad reaction to a doctor prescribed medicine and had a seizure early one morning. We were at the hospital in 15 minutes thanks to the modern automobile. We don’t live in a city because we consciously chose the suburbs. I grew up in a walkable city and getting my first car was still one of the highlights of my youth. Now my kids play soccer and they practice and play 4 days/week all over the local area. Good luck doing that without a car. The freedom/flexibility a car provides us as individuals is unprecedented in human history. You can drive from NY to LA in 41 hours and you are on your own schedule. For the folks that don’t like driving, you have plenty of cities to choose from where that’s doable. That’s the beauty of modern society - the choice is yours and we don’t have to judge/demonize one another’s choices.

dionidium 8y ago
> When your kid spikes a fever at 1am and you have no car and you need to go buy some children’s ibuprofen, what are you going to do? I could hit 3 bodegas from my front steps with a rock. I don't need to start a truck to get Ibuprofen.
- GiorgioG 8y ago
  I’m happy for you but not everyone lives in such a place that has that many options within spitting distance.
  - dionidium 8y ago
    Sure, but the point is that nothing in your post was made possible by the automobile. People in walkable cities do everything you mention and they did all those things before the invention of the automobile. If you build a suburb so that you need a car, then, sure, I guess you'll need a car. But that's not because any of those activities require a car. It's just that your town was built to require it! If we put a dome over your town and sucked out all the oxygen, then you'd also need spacesuit to perform all those tasks, too. But it wouldn't be because any of those tasks require a space suit. You'd need the space suit because we sucked out all the oxygen.
    - GiorgioG 8y ago
      > If you build a suburb I didn't build a suburb - it was already here, just like you didn't build the city you live in. I drove to the suburb to begin with of my own free will because I didn't like living in a city (having already done so, Buffalo & Boston.) I'd already made the choice to live a lifestyle that is automobile-inclusive ;) You don't get to judge or decide for me what is right for me and vice-versa. We all have a choices to make and do the best we can with what we have. It's interesting that for all the intelligent people on HN, there's a lack of empathy and understanding that everyone has their own perception of reality. What's 'right' and 'real' in your mind may 1) not actually be reality 2) be neither 'right' nor 'wrong', but just a personal preference/opinion. I got a taste of this myself when I stumbled upon this book (and it's second part) https://www.amazon.com/DAY-Through-German-Eyes-Hidden-ebook/dp/B00VX372UE https://www.amazon.com/DAY-Through-German-Eyes-Hidden-ebook/... (D-Day through German Eyes.) It's been eye-opening for me because I'd always assumed the Germans troops were evil men who were all bent on conquering Europe.
      - dionidium 8y ago
        Unfortunately, this live-and-let-live account of history simply isn’t true. The suburbs were made possible via massive government subsidies, both in infrastructure and incentives for suburban homeownership. Also, exclusionary zoning played an enormous role in deciding what those places looked like and they did it in large part to control who got to live there. Finally, your lifestyle choices have externalities, from the immediately obvious 30k deaths a year, to more dangerous streets for people who choose not to drive, to environmental damage, to cities clogged with the cars of suburban commuters twice a day.
        GiorgioG 8y ago
        Your urban lifestyle choices have externalities as well, you just choose to ignore (or not look for them.) http://science.time.com/2012/09/18/urban-planet-how-growing-cities-will-wreck-the-environment-unless-we-build-them-right/ http://science.time.com/2012/09/18/urban-planet-how-growing-... https://www.prb.org/urbanizationanenvironmentalforcetobereckonedwith/ https://www.prb.org/urbanizationanenvironmentalforcetobereck...
  - adrianN 8y ago
    So your argument is that you need your car because you don't live in a place that is designed for humans, so we shouldn't change cities to be less car dependent?
    - whatsstolat 8y ago
      Flipside is suburban areas have more land attached to the house (for a given $) and bigger parks etc. That's more humane than inner cities.
      - KozmoNau7 8y ago
        Not if it means no convenience stores in walking/biking distance, forcing you to buy a car for basic necessities.
        GiorgioG 8y ago
        It's not forced - we choose to buy them ;)
        KozmoNau7 8y ago
        Is it really a choice, when you have no practical alternative?
        GiorgioG 8y ago
        I have a choice, I can live in a walkable place, but it involves tradeoffs that I don't care to make - because I don't see car ownership (or driving) as a negative thing, unlike this echo chamber.
        whatsstolat 8y ago
        Depends. Most suburbs and towns have convenience stores at least where I have lived. USA might be different. Delivery is another option.
    - 8y ago
  - numtel 8y ago
    Tiny villages in Mexico have these kinds of options. It's not an amazing achievement.
    - GiorgioG 8y ago
      I'm happy for the Mexicans - not sure why that's relevant.
      - numtel 8y ago
        Our zoning regulations enforce the automobile's hegemony, increasing distances and exposing pedestrians to the elements as well as dangerous traffic. Without being forced to build in this financially insolvent manner, [1] no community would choose to isolate people from each other in the way that we do now in the United States. Our neighboring country, Mexico, (among many others) shows that a costly design is not required for urban and suburban environments to work for humans. The impending arrival self-driving car gives hope that the gigantic proportion of land devoted to car storage can be radically reduced, giving space for more buildings and habitable spaces between the buildings we have already constructed. This is a good sign for the future but we sure took an expensive, circuitous route to get there, all the while losing local power over our communities to industrial interests. [1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/4/19/the-sprawl-conversation https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/4/19/the-sprawl-con...
WhompingWindows 8y ago
What about the choice of an individual to get an F150 which has an unnecessarily large V8 engine roaring and idling when no one is using it for what it was designed for? I am in a city surrounded by cars that are far too large for their designated duties. People choose, like you mention, and yet it's the children with asthma and my mother with asthma who pays the price for the ridiculously oversized and smog-producing vehicles that are everywhere in society. I'm all for pickup trucks and minivans and buses, but only in the right application. At other times, which is probably 80-90% of the large vehicles I see, your choice to go alone in the car hurts all of our lungs and our planet.
- GiorgioG 8y ago
  > I'm all for pickup trucks and minivans and buses, but only in the right application. I'm glad I don't live in a place where it's ok to limit people's choices based on someone's opinion on what is or isn't the 'right application.' I'm sorry about your mother's asthma; my 6 year old son is a type 1 diabetic - that doesn't make it ok for me to go chastising society's choice to put sugar in practically EVERYTHING we eat or to try force society to change because of my son's misfortune.
  - wilsonnb2 8y ago
    Unless someone is forcing your kid to eat food with sugar in it, it's not a good comparison. Your neighbors don't really have a choice as to whether or not they enjoy "hearing its V8 roar from inside the house through several walls/doors" or breathe the extra pollution that some (but not all) large trucks create. > When your kid spikes a fever at 1am and you have no car and you need to go buy some children’s ibuprofen, what are you going to do? I can run to my local 24/7 grocer or Walmart and be back in 10 minutes flat. I'm sure your neighbors will love being woken up in the middle of the night. Perhaps some of them would be glad to live in a society where there are reasonable limits on what situations other people can force you into for their own pleasure. Please note that this comment isn't really directed at you specifically - you might not have close neighbors or they might be truck enthusiasts as well. It's directed at all owners of obnoxiously loud trucks who don't care how it affects other people, which may or may not be you.
yread 8y ago
This satire right? > what are you going to do? err, take a taxi? Or have ibuprofen always at home?
- GiorgioG 8y ago
  Do you all live in huge cities like NYC/LA/SF/etc? Not everyone can/does live in a city where you're tripping over Taxi/Uber at all hours of the night.
megy 8y ago
> Have kids? When your kid spikes a fever at 1am and you have no car and you need to go buy some children’s ibuprofen, what are you going to do? I can run to my local 24/7 grocer or Walmart and be back in 10 minutes flat. I can cycle to mine in 5 minutes, taxi, uber, run, walk, etc.. Or use one of the car share services near me.
lev99 8y ago
> I can run to my local 24/7 grocer or Walmart and be back in 10 minutes flat. > We were at the hospital in 15 minutes thanks to the modern automobile. If you live within 3 minutes of a Walmart (3 minutes traveling there, 3 minutes checking out, and 3 minutes returning) and 15 minutes of a hospital you are significantly better located than the average suburbanite. Most walkable urban areas will have 24 hour convenience stores every few blocks. Most walkable urban areas will have many options for quick travel to medical facilities (Zipcar like services, uber like services, frequent emergency clinics, ambulances). I think cities have better access to medical care than suburban areas. There are more medical facilities. There are more options in choosing primary care. There are more specialist. There are more alternative treatment options. Try getting antibiotics for strep throat at 2am for less than $250 cash in less than ninety minutes in a suburb.
- GiorgioG 8y ago
  > Most walkable urban areas will have 24 hour convenience stores every few blocks. This is only true in very large cities (NYC, LA, Paris, etc.) In smaller cities my experience is quite the opposite, shops close early and they are far and few between. I'm talking between 200-500k population (my sample size is small, but one city is in the US the other in France, neither had pharmacies within walking distance that were open past 9pm.) > Try getting antibiotics for strep throat at 2am for less than $250 cash in less than ninety minutes in a suburb Never been a problem here with a local 24/7 pharmacy that takes insurance so I'm not sure where you're getting your $250 figure from.
  - lev99 8y ago
    > I'm talking between 200-500k population Are there many walkable cities with populations in that range? > I'm not sure where you're getting your $250 figure from. Including getting the script.
    - GiorgioG 8y ago
      My wife needed a Z-Pack (antibiotic) last week and it cost us $0.11 all-in. If you don't have health insurance, you're on your own (sadly.)
cimmanom 8y ago
Ibuprofen at 3am? Go downstairs and walk around the corner to the bodega or 24-hour pharmacy.
- GiorgioG 8y ago
  Having lived in 2 cities in the US and in Europe in bad neighborhoods, you'd not catch me walking around past 11pm especially in the summer. Don't assume that everyone can live a life of privilege in an upscale urban area.
  - cimmanom 8y ago
    I’ve done that as a small woman living alone in an opposite-of-upscale neighborhood, across the street from a public housing project. Really not a big deal. I don’t know what neighborhoods you were living in, but my experience is that for every dangerous urban neighborhood there’s an equally affordable one that isn’t dangerous if you know where to look. And it’s not like everyone can afford the privilege of a car either.
    - GiorgioG 8y ago
      > Really not a big deal. Says someone who has never experienced being beat up by a group of young men because of my race in just such a neighborhood as you described. Growing up in a bad neighborhood, I didn't exactly have a choice to leave (until my parents bought a house in a better neighborhood in my late teen years.) I remember vividly the frozen blood on the concrete sidewalk across the street from my childhood home when leaving to walk to school - someone had been bludgeoned the death in the middle of the night. Before I had a car, my girlfriend at the time lived in an even worse neighborhood (where shootings were a common/daily occurrence) the anxiety I experienced walking to the bus stop from her house, then waiting downtown for a transfer at a bus stop across the street from public housing, etc - that feeling is so vivid in my memory even though it's been 20 years. Not everyone shares the same experiences, and thus have the same values & priorities. Even after getting a car my troubles weren't quite over. I was nearly carjacked after dropping off the same girlfriend at her house at 11pm on a Friday night - he managed to open the car door, but not before I did a 180 in reverse and sped off.) Because I hadn't learned my lesson, I also had to change a flat tire in the same neighborhood at 3am one night. There's nothing like the threat of being shot or beat up to force you to learn to change a tire in a few minutes. I'm happy in my suburb with a big backyard and a big dog and my truck (and yes firearms (gasp!)) It's fine if that isn't your cup of tea, just don't judge me for it.

dionidium 8y ago

> When your kid spikes a fever at 1am and you have no car and you need to go buy some children’s ibuprofen, what are you going to do? I could hit 3 bodegas from my front steps with a rock. I don't need to start a truck to get Ibuprofen.

GiorgioG 8y ago
I’m happy for you but not everyone lives in such a place that has that many options within spitting distance.
- dionidium 8y ago
  Sure, but the point is that nothing in your post was made possible by the automobile. People in walkable cities do everything you mention and they did all those things before the invention of the automobile. If you build a suburb so that you need a car, then, sure, I guess you'll need a car. But that's not because any of those activities require a car. It's just that your town was built to require it! If we put a dome over your town and sucked out all the oxygen, then you'd also need spacesuit to perform all those tasks, too. But it wouldn't be because any of those tasks require a space suit. You'd need the space suit because we sucked out all the oxygen.
  - GiorgioG 8y ago
    > If you build a suburb I didn't build a suburb - it was already here, just like you didn't build the city you live in. I drove to the suburb to begin with of my own free will because I didn't like living in a city (having already done so, Buffalo & Boston.) I'd already made the choice to live a lifestyle that is automobile-inclusive ;) You don't get to judge or decide for me what is right for me and vice-versa. We all have a choices to make and do the best we can with what we have. It's interesting that for all the intelligent people on HN, there's a lack of empathy and understanding that everyone has their own perception of reality. What's 'right' and 'real' in your mind may 1) not actually be reality 2) be neither 'right' nor 'wrong', but just a personal preference/opinion. I got a taste of this myself when I stumbled upon this book (and it's second part) https://www.amazon.com/DAY-Through-German-Eyes-Hidden-ebook/dp/B00VX372UE https://www.amazon.com/DAY-Through-German-Eyes-Hidden-ebook/... (D-Day through German Eyes.) It's been eye-opening for me because I'd always assumed the Germans troops were evil men who were all bent on conquering Europe.
    - dionidium 8y ago
      Unfortunately, this live-and-let-live account of history simply isn’t true. The suburbs were made possible via massive government subsidies, both in infrastructure and incentives for suburban homeownership. Also, exclusionary zoning played an enormous role in deciding what those places looked like and they did it in large part to control who got to live there. Finally, your lifestyle choices have externalities, from the immediately obvious 30k deaths a year, to more dangerous streets for people who choose not to drive, to environmental damage, to cities clogged with the cars of suburban commuters twice a day.
      - GiorgioG 8y ago
        Your urban lifestyle choices have externalities as well, you just choose to ignore (or not look for them.) http://science.time.com/2012/09/18/urban-planet-how-growing-cities-will-wreck-the-environment-unless-we-build-them-right/ http://science.time.com/2012/09/18/urban-planet-how-growing-... https://www.prb.org/urbanizationanenvironmentalforcetobereckonedwith/ https://www.prb.org/urbanizationanenvironmentalforcetobereck...
- adrianN 8y ago
  So your argument is that you need your car because you don't live in a place that is designed for humans, so we shouldn't change cities to be less car dependent?
  - whatsstolat 8y ago
    Flipside is suburban areas have more land attached to the house (for a given $) and bigger parks etc. That's more humane than inner cities.
    - KozmoNau7 8y ago
      Not if it means no convenience stores in walking/biking distance, forcing you to buy a car for basic necessities.
      - GiorgioG 8y ago
        It's not forced - we choose to buy them ;)
        KozmoNau7 8y ago
        Is it really a choice, when you have no practical alternative?
        GiorgioG 8y ago
        I have a choice, I can live in a walkable place, but it involves tradeoffs that I don't care to make - because I don't see car ownership (or driving) as a negative thing, unlike this echo chamber.
      - whatsstolat 8y ago
        Depends. Most suburbs and towns have convenience stores at least where I have lived. USA might be different. Delivery is another option.
  - 8y ago
- numtel 8y ago
  Tiny villages in Mexico have these kinds of options. It's not an amazing achievement.
  - GiorgioG 8y ago
    I'm happy for the Mexicans - not sure why that's relevant.
    - numtel 8y ago
      Our zoning regulations enforce the automobile's hegemony, increasing distances and exposing pedestrians to the elements as well as dangerous traffic. Without being forced to build in this financially insolvent manner, [1] no community would choose to isolate people from each other in the way that we do now in the United States. Our neighboring country, Mexico, (among many others) shows that a costly design is not required for urban and suburban environments to work for humans. The impending arrival self-driving car gives hope that the gigantic proportion of land devoted to car storage can be radically reduced, giving space for more buildings and habitable spaces between the buildings we have already constructed. This is a good sign for the future but we sure took an expensive, circuitous route to get there, all the while losing local power over our communities to industrial interests. [1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/4/19/the-sprawl-conversation https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/4/19/the-sprawl-con...

WhompingWindows 8y ago

What about the choice of an individual to get an F150 which has an unnecessarily large V8 engine roaring and idling when no one is using it for what it was designed for? I am in a city surrounded by cars that are far too large for their designated duties. People choose, like you mention, and yet it's the children with asthma and my mother with asthma who pays the price for the ridiculously oversized and smog-producing vehicles that are everywhere in society. I'm all for pickup trucks and minivans and buses, but only in the right application. At other times, which is probably 80-90% of the large vehicles I see, your choice to go alone in the car hurts all of our lungs and our planet.

GiorgioG 8y ago
> I'm all for pickup trucks and minivans and buses, but only in the right application. I'm glad I don't live in a place where it's ok to limit people's choices based on someone's opinion on what is or isn't the 'right application.' I'm sorry about your mother's asthma; my 6 year old son is a type 1 diabetic - that doesn't make it ok for me to go chastising society's choice to put sugar in practically EVERYTHING we eat or to try force society to change because of my son's misfortune.
- wilsonnb2 8y ago
  Unless someone is forcing your kid to eat food with sugar in it, it's not a good comparison. Your neighbors don't really have a choice as to whether or not they enjoy "hearing its V8 roar from inside the house through several walls/doors" or breathe the extra pollution that some (but not all) large trucks create. > When your kid spikes a fever at 1am and you have no car and you need to go buy some children’s ibuprofen, what are you going to do? I can run to my local 24/7 grocer or Walmart and be back in 10 minutes flat. I'm sure your neighbors will love being woken up in the middle of the night. Perhaps some of them would be glad to live in a society where there are reasonable limits on what situations other people can force you into for their own pleasure. Please note that this comment isn't really directed at you specifically - you might not have close neighbors or they might be truck enthusiasts as well. It's directed at all owners of obnoxiously loud trucks who don't care how it affects other people, which may or may not be you.

yread 8y ago

This satire right? > what are you going to do? err, take a taxi? Or have ibuprofen always at home?

GiorgioG 8y ago
Do you all live in huge cities like NYC/LA/SF/etc? Not everyone can/does live in a city where you're tripping over Taxi/Uber at all hours of the night.

megy 8y ago

> Have kids? When your kid spikes a fever at 1am and you have no car and you need to go buy some children’s ibuprofen, what are you going to do? I can run to my local 24/7 grocer or Walmart and be back in 10 minutes flat. I can cycle to mine in 5 minutes, taxi, uber, run, walk, etc.. Or use one of the car share services near me.

lev99 8y ago

> I can run to my local 24/7 grocer or Walmart and be back in 10 minutes flat. > We were at the hospital in 15 minutes thanks to the modern automobile. If you live within 3 minutes of a Walmart (3 minutes traveling there, 3 minutes checking out, and 3 minutes returning) and 15 minutes of a hospital you are significantly better located than the average suburbanite. Most walkable urban areas will have 24 hour convenience stores every few blocks. Most walkable urban areas will have many options for quick travel to medical facilities (Zipcar like services, uber like services, frequent emergency clinics, ambulances). I think cities have better access to medical care than suburban areas. There are more medical facilities. There are more options in choosing primary care. There are more specialist. There are more alternative treatment options. Try getting antibiotics for strep throat at 2am for less than $250 cash in less than ninety minutes in a suburb.

GiorgioG 8y ago
> Most walkable urban areas will have 24 hour convenience stores every few blocks. This is only true in very large cities (NYC, LA, Paris, etc.) In smaller cities my experience is quite the opposite, shops close early and they are far and few between. I'm talking between 200-500k population (my sample size is small, but one city is in the US the other in France, neither had pharmacies within walking distance that were open past 9pm.) > Try getting antibiotics for strep throat at 2am for less than $250 cash in less than ninety minutes in a suburb Never been a problem here with a local 24/7 pharmacy that takes insurance so I'm not sure where you're getting your $250 figure from.
- lev99 8y ago
  > I'm talking between 200-500k population Are there many walkable cities with populations in that range? > I'm not sure where you're getting your $250 figure from. Including getting the script.
  - GiorgioG 8y ago
    My wife needed a Z-Pack (antibiotic) last week and it cost us $0.11 all-in. If you don't have health insurance, you're on your own (sadly.)

cimmanom 8y ago

Ibuprofen at 3am? Go downstairs and walk around the corner to the bodega or 24-hour pharmacy.

GiorgioG 8y ago
Having lived in 2 cities in the US and in Europe in bad neighborhoods, you'd not catch me walking around past 11pm especially in the summer. Don't assume that everyone can live a life of privilege in an upscale urban area.
- cimmanom 8y ago
  I’ve done that as a small woman living alone in an opposite-of-upscale neighborhood, across the street from a public housing project. Really not a big deal. I don’t know what neighborhoods you were living in, but my experience is that for every dangerous urban neighborhood there’s an equally affordable one that isn’t dangerous if you know where to look. And it’s not like everyone can afford the privilege of a car either.
  - GiorgioG 8y ago
    > Really not a big deal. Says someone who has never experienced being beat up by a group of young men because of my race in just such a neighborhood as you described. Growing up in a bad neighborhood, I didn't exactly have a choice to leave (until my parents bought a house in a better neighborhood in my late teen years.) I remember vividly the frozen blood on the concrete sidewalk across the street from my childhood home when leaving to walk to school - someone had been bludgeoned the death in the middle of the night. Before I had a car, my girlfriend at the time lived in an even worse neighborhood (where shootings were a common/daily occurrence) the anxiety I experienced walking to the bus stop from her house, then waiting downtown for a transfer at a bus stop across the street from public housing, etc - that feeling is so vivid in my memory even though it's been 20 years. Not everyone shares the same experiences, and thus have the same values & priorities. Even after getting a car my troubles weren't quite over. I was nearly carjacked after dropping off the same girlfriend at her house at 11pm on a Friday night - he managed to open the car door, but not before I did a 180 in reverse and sped off.) Because I hadn't learned my lesson, I also had to change a flat tire in the same neighborhood at 3am one night. There's nothing like the threat of being shot or beat up to force you to learn to change a tire in a few minutes. I'm happy in my suburb with a big backyard and a big dog and my truck (and yes firearms (gasp!)) It's fine if that isn't your cup of tea, just don't judge me for it.