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The new generations in Europe bother less and less to get a driver’s license. Most of my friends don’t have one. Public transport is that good.
by the_clarence 8y ago
The new generations in Europe bother less and less to get a driver’s license. Most of my friends don’t have one. Public transport is that good.
- chrisseaton 8y agoDo most of your friends live in cities? How do your french friends in the rural countryside manage without cars?
- jordanbeiber 8y agoIsn’t urbanization a thing?
- iwiririwo 8y agoAs in "people moving to the city", it is. But in my area, the city density never reaches a level where anything except the car is really convenient. Sure you can take the bus. If you're back home at 11, willing make a 15 minute ride an hour's, and pay the same as for a cheap car.
- jordanbeiber 8y agoFair enough. But as a whole the people of the world move together in ever exanding lumps. One (there are many pros and cons) slightly positive side effect is that efficency have to increase. It’s unavoidable as humans in general seems to have a will to survive. What seems to slow it down is mainly an unbridled capitalism, which is why for example China in a weird and somewhat unexpected fashion leads the way. EV’s are not only more energy efficient, they also have a positive impact when it comes to proximity pollution.
- freeflight 8y agoThis is really an issue of the quality of public transport and general infrastructure. Southern Germany, Bavaria, has a very good railway system. Even the regional railway lines often get you faster where you need to go than a car would, especially during rush hours. There's also the rarely mentioned factor of parking space becoming increasingly harder to find and more expensive in city centers. In my region, this is being solved by building affordable, or even free, parking decks near subway stations on the fringes of the city. But even with that the parking situation still remains tense.
- chrisseaton 8y agoI don't understand what you mean by saying that. Do you think nobody lives in the countryside any more? Do you think the next generation will permanently live in cities? Who do you think will grow your food and look after your open spaces? My point was the author of my parent comment probably has a very skewed view of the need for cars, if all their friends are young metropolitan professionals. They have a blind spot to the needs of a lot of other people.
- dorgo 8y ago>Who do you think will grow your food and look after your open spaces? Robots, i hope.
- chrisseaton 8y agoThat's not remotely realistic any time soon. We can't all move into the cities and leave the countryside as a wasteland. Many people want to live there, and we need people to live there to keep the spaces living and working. I worry that many people in tech have never spent any time outdoors and have no appreciation of nature at all.
- Brakenshire 8y agoIt is already true that robots grow our food, the labour productivity for food production is orders of magnitude higher than 100-200 years ago, huge tracts of land that previously required hundreds or even thousands of workers are now managed by a handful of people and their machines. That process in a way has already happened. And it is already the case that most career opportunities (and a high percentage of young people) are in the cities.
- petre 8y agoNot a wasteland, just sparsely populated like Isaac Asimov's Solaria. Don't worry, the countryside will be just fine without people. Just read The World Without Us. I guess I'll become an agricultural robot repairman like the guy in Interstellar when I grow older.
- 8y ago
- BorisEm 8y agoYoung people living in the country side of France all get their driver’s license as soon as possible.
- usrusr 8y agoThey move to the city. I wonder how much of that gasoline use reduction is simply a consequence of ever higher urbanisation.
- RivieraKid 8y agoPublic transport.
- CydeWeys 8y agoNot many people live in the rural countryside, and those that do likely still need cars. And yeah, it's very common for someone who lives in the city themselves to have all of their friends also live in the city. Not many young adults out in the boonies, plus how would you ever meet and become friends with them in the first place if you couldn't get there?
- the_clarence 8y agoSome of them got their driver license early, some of them had their parents do most of their driving until they moved to the city.
- thepangolino 8y agoNot necessarily. Some cities still have fairly bad public transport. Using the car just happens to be worse.
- jsemrau 8y agoAnecdotal evidence, I just came back from Munich and compared to Singapore vehicular traffic is much worse.
- jmiserez 8y agoWhile Singapore public transport is good and taxis are reliable, they also make it very expensive for people to own a car, and the total number is restricted. See here for numbers: https://dollarsandsense.sg/complete-guide-buying-car-singapore/ https://dollarsandsense.sg/complete-guide-buying-car-singapo... Their example car worth 50'000S$ (~36'000 USD) will end up costing 160'000S$ (116'000 USD) total.
- charlesdm 8y agoStill cheaper than most Scandinavian countries!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- htgb 8y agoWhat on earth do you mean with that? Seems to be around 40k USD in Sweden, and I've never before heard of any rumor that cars would be an unaffordable luxury in Scandinavia.
- charlesdm 8y agoHow much would, say a new Audi A4, cost you in Sweden? Singapore is expensive because of the additional taxes that get added on to the base price. From what people (on HN in fact) have told me most Scandinavian countries levy significant extra taxes on car purchases. So the $40k car might actually only be $15 to 20k in other countries such as Germany and Belgium?
- skrause 8y agoBut still the total number of cars e.g. in Germany has been rising in the last few years: http://www.geodaten.guetersloh.de/umweltdaten/umweltd/daten/1201_C4_Fahrzeugbestand_Bund.gif http://www.geodaten.guetersloh.de/umweltdaten/umweltd/daten/... The only decline in car ownership was in 2008, and that was because of the financial crisis, not because of great public transport (which has actually been getting worse in my city in the last few years). The story that people are giving up cars in masses is mostly a myth, even though it might look like that if you live in certain bubbles in the largest cities.
- wongarsu 8y agoIf a middle income family gets a second and sometimes even third car that doesn't necessarily translate into a proportional increase in kilometres driven. If enough families get additional cars that could also easily offset whatever young people are doing. It's more complex than "there are more cars, thus people giving up cars is not a trend"
- ineedasername 8y agoBut are middle class families getting second and third cars at higher rates? It's a plausible explantion if true, but I haven't seen any evidence of it.
- rsync 8y ago"If a middle income family gets a second and sometimes even third car that doesn't necessarily translate into a proportional increase in kilometres driven." True, but the embedded carbon cost of each additional vehicle is roughly equal to 10-12 years of driving that vehicle.
- petre 8y agoDon't worry. It eventually gets sold to less fortunate people second hand.
- your-nanny 8y agonew vehicle. but used? lots of second cars are beaters. does demand in the used market induce manufacture of more cars? hard to see how.
- blattimwind 8y agoCoincidentally, many of the folks not bothering with a driver's license don't know even the most basic traffic rules, yet move in traffic with their bikes... to their own (and others) detriment.
- usrusr 8y agoAnd yet many of them know more about the rules applying to cycling than most drivers. A cyclist rolling through a red light is fully aware of its meaning, licence or not. Many drivers who cut off a cyclist while turning however seem to have a deeply rooted misbelief that somehow a turning car would have precedence over a cyclist going straight. The licensing requirement is surprisingly ineffective.
- miluge 8y agoI lost mine in France when I was 21 ( got it at 18yo ), I'm 27 now and just starting again you can travel Europe quite easily the big problem where I live now is I need it more and more due to work.
- charlesdm 8y agoThis depends on the country you're in. If you're living in a large city such as London, Berlin or Paris -- sure. But try living in Belgium, a bit more rural Germany or the Netherlands (perhaps with the exception of Amsterdam) and things are definitely less accessible if you want to get out of the city for a bit.
- phicoh 8y agoIt's a different pattern of living. If you mostly use a car then you know about highways, traffic jams, parking, etc. If you mainly use public transports, then you know what places are easily reached that way, when the last train, bus, etc. goes in the evening. There is stuff that is hard to do with public transport (be in the middle of nowhere early in the morning) and there is stuff that is hard to do with a car (go out drinking in a city center).
- ollysb 8y ago> things are definitely less accessible if you want to get out of the city for a bit. You can always rent a car when you want one. Just checked some prices and in the off season here in Barcelona you can pick up a car for $1/day...
- olalonde 8y agoI have a time believing that figure... Where did you get it from?
- maccard 8y agoI can't confirm OPs number but I have in the past hired a car for less than 6 euro a day in Ireland.
- omnimus 8y agoThe problem is these prices are trap. I think its a big risk since the car is not covered - if anything happens to it (somebody crashes into you or even malfunction) then you pay for it.
- dorfsmay 8y agoWhere do you live? My experience is that the better transport a city has, the more expensive living in that city is, and middle class people are pushed to the suburbs where transportation take a long time to take you to work and you need a car to go shopping and activities.
- candiodari 8y agoPlus it is common knowledge that this graph seems to match almost perfectly with the massive prolonged economic crisis in Italy. Somehow that seems to totally escape everyone here. It is also common wisdom that gasoline demand growth (and more generally energy growth) is the most direct and reliable indicator of economic trouble, more so than any other (mostly because governments "change" (a cynic would say falsify) essentially all other indicators). And lo an behold ! This matches the data in other sources: https://www.google.com.au/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=eg_use_pcap_kg_oe&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:ITA&ifdim=region&tstart=1100991600000&tend=1448060400000&hl=en&dl=en&ind=false https://www.google.com.au/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f... https://www.google.com.au/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=eg_use_pcap_kg_oe&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_kd_zg&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:ITA&ifdim=region&tstart=1100991600000&tend=1448060400000&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false https://www.google.com.au/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f... (note that the last graph is without taking inflation into account, so the real "zero" level is somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5% at the moment and therfore hasn't seen a single year of real economic growth since 2000 or so, and has had a few years of double digit "real" declines) So I think we can safely conclude that the real issue is that Italy has seen a very long an disastrous economic recession, and that they are in fact not buying a lot of electrical cars. This is also very much not a positive evolution. This is going to have cost a LOT of Italians a LOT of quality of life.
- dominotw 8y agoEven after they hit 35? Easy to not have a dl when you are young and no kids.
- mschuetz 8y agoStarting with elementary school, they can just take the public transport on their own. Used to do this as a kid in Vienna. For younger kids, cars are defenitely an advantage but I'm seeing more and more parents with their kids on a bike. Either on a childrens backseat, in the front part of a carrier bycicle, or by accompanying them on their own bike.
- dominotw 8y agoThats nice. Americans cities are too cold and not bike friendly for that, unfortunately. Bike friendliness might change( or not) in future tho.
- freeflight 8y agoIt's still easy after 35 because nobody is forcing you to have kids.
- dominotw 8y agohuh? How is that relevant to the question I asked. Don't have kids because u don't want to get a DL ?
- gambiting 8y agoI absolutely disagree with the conclusion. I live in the UK and my friends who don't own a car mostly don't have one because it's so stupidly expensive to own one. None of them say they prefer to sit on the bus for an hour instead of a 30 minute drive, no matter how nice the bus is.
- longerthoughts 8y ago>None of them say they prefer to sit on the bus for an hour instead of a 30 minute drive Nobody suggested this. The point is that when public transit is effective, it becomes more attractive because of the cost savings relative to owning a car. In the absence of effective public transit, commuters will still tend to buy cars regardless of the expense because they don’t have a good alternative.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- stiGGG 8y agoFrom my experience in Berlin it’s more like sitting 20 minutes in the underground, instead of 30 minutes sitting in the car if you include finding a parking lot.
- em-bee 8y agoi do. on the bus i can read, reply to messages or even sleep. if i had a car, i'd have to pay attention to traffic. it's half an hour wasted vs an hour doing something productive. greetings, eMBee.
- gambiting 8y agoIf driving means being home with your kids 30 minutes earlier, then being productive on the bus means absolutely nothing in comparison. Besides, I like to listen to podcasts/audio books while driving, so it's not completely wasted time.