4 ms·

Eh, I agree, BUT... lets not pretend that is immediately viable, either. Severely restricting license access in a country with often (varying by city) terrible

Eh, I agree, BUT... lets not pretend that is immediately viable, either. Severely restricting license access in a country with often (varying by city) terrible public transit seems to be a recipe for disaster. Your comment quips as if state officials have their finger over the button of restricting licenses, but choose not to merely for lack of care. It is far, far more complicated than you give it credit for. Or so, I imagine. As HN sometimes forgets, the world exists beyond the lines of SF. Some places have terrible public transport.

wongarsu 7y ago
To elaborate with an example: Germany has much stricter driver licencing (21 hours of theoretical courses, 9 hours or practical lessons with a certified instructor, practical and theoretical exam, and on top of that many people take more lessons to be able to pass the exams. And that's just for normal cars below 3.5 tons). Some small percentage of people try multiple times and never pass the exams. These strict requirements are certainly a factor why we can have the Autobahn with no speed limit (on 50% of the total length) while still having significantly fewer road deaths than the US (4.2 vs 7.3 per billion kilometers traveled, 6.4 vs 14.2 per 100k vehicles). But we can only do that in Germany because our public transit is at least passable and our cities and villages are built densely. Public transit could be much better, but in any place with at least 500 inhabitants you can live fairly comfortably without a car if you have to.