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Your comment shows how bad car culture is. You think you're the enlightened one, but you want an electric sports car for getting "around town"? People should be

Your comment shows how bad car culture is. You think you're the enlightened one, but you want an electric sports car for getting "around town"? People should be walking or cycling around town. Cars are actively harmful to towns. Cars have led to generations of people who don't realise they are capable of walking further than a few steps between car and building. A kind of learned helplessness. When you step outside of car culture it's really sad to see.

dnadler 2y ago
People in US suburbs frequently live several miles from their town center, if they even have a town center at all. Cycling simply isn’t viable to large swaths of the US. There isn’t an easy answer to this either, given that you’d probably need to tear down entire neighborhoods and rebuild a more dense town
- Zigurd 2y ago
  E-bikes fix most of those problems. A 10 mile trip, out and back, at 20mph, with no concern for loss of momentum at stop signs and lights is easily do-able by anyone who doesn't need mobility aids.
  - dnadler 2y ago
    That fixes it for certain types of people, but certainly not for most people in in the north east during winter.
    - Zigurd 2y ago
      Most of the sprawl in America is not in the northeast. E-bikes are perfect for US suburbs.
- jeffbee 2y ago
  > People in US suburbs frequently live several miles from their town center It is not the responsibility of the citizens of the central city to accommodate suburban drivers.
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    In that case all the retail will go out to the suburbs and they’ll lose the jobs and have to drive out to the suburbs to go shopping. Or just lose the jobs to AMZN warehouses even further away.
    - jeffbee 2y ago
      That is clearly not inevitable which you can demonstrate to yourself by glancing around and pretty much any city on earth.
  - dnadler 2y ago
    Well, commutes into a central city is a bit of different beast, and many metros in the US have trains that service the suburbs. Driving in and around the suburbs is what I was talking about.
coliveira 2y ago
You're right, but doing otherwise is almost impossible in North America. Everything is made to benefit big business owning big box retail stores and put mom and pop small retailers out of business. If you don't have a car you may pretty much starve except for a few cities in US and Canada. No wonder online shopping is becoming so popular, it is anti-human to get into a car and then be forced to walk a mile inside a big retail store to make a small purchase.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
LUmBULtERA 2y ago
Except in a lot of places where it’s easy to use public transportation and bikes, it’s still useful to own a car for around town to places a bit further away. Or when it would take you 1.5 hours by public transit (even in areas with good public transit!) vs 0.5 hours by car, on a 110 F day. This thread is about car choice, which doesn’t mean people don’t use other options when they make sense.
- Kiro 2y ago
  You should at least admit that this is an American problem. No-one in my family has a driver's license and it's not an issue whatsoever. There's very little reason to own a car in a society with a functioning public transport system.
  - LUmBULtERA 2y ago
    It’s funny, a couple decades ago I studied in Vienna. I was amazed at how great their public transit was! I didn’t need a car to get around. But I made a local friend there, and at first I was surprised she had a car there. Then, yeah it made sense if you still live somewhere other than city center. Buses to metro to something on the other side of the city could still take a long time. Add cargo, a kid? No, this isn’t an American thing. Go look at how many people own cars across Europe. Plenty of people do.
  - SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
    I don't agree with the premise or the conclusion. There's little reason to own a car in a dense, urban area with a functional public transport system. I wouldn't bother to maintain a car if I lived in the middle of Tokyo or Amsterdam, but when you get away from the urban core, most people still own and need cars in Japan and the Netherlands.
  - Stagnant 2y ago
    I don't think it is fair to say that it is an "American problem". Not owning a car could be realistic if you live in a really large city where moving with public transport can potentially be faster than moving with a car. But even then I wonder how a family with kids would carry groceries unless you live right next to a supermarket. Often times in HN you get the impression like americans are the only ones using cars to get around, but at least where I live (Finland) families generally own at least one car even if good public transportation is available. In 2021, 89% of adult men and 76% of women had a drivers license and I would say that commuting to work with a car is more common than with public transport. Despite having decent public transportation, it is just seen more convenient to use the car.
dgfitz 2y ago
> People should be walking or cycling around town. This. Is a very out of touch opinion. I could write 20 paragraphs disagreeing, but I doubt it is worth my time to write or anyone else’s to read. Not every person is able-bodied enough to walk and bike. Also, people happen to need to get from A to B when it is cold, dark, raining, extremely hot, snowing, or just some kind of shitty outside. People need to drive to a store for food or supplies that cannot be carried or biked back to the destination. People have multiple children that simply cannot walk or bike. Old people cannot simply walk or bike. This concept of a car-less world is just so completely out of touch with reality, saying it louder isn’t going to change anything.
- globular-toast 2y ago
  So you think most people are incapable of walking or cycling? And you're saying I'm out of touch?! As for cold, dark, raining. Boo fucking hoo. If you had to go somewhere you'd deal with it. Cars have made people into weak, incapable little creatures. It's honestly pathetic. I cycle with food and supplies in my panniers all the time. What exactly are you buying every week that can't be transported back without fossil fuel assistance? You don't think children can walk or bike? Are you crazy? A healthy child doesn't want to sit still. They're capable of locomotion from about age 3. Old people can get around too. Sure there are some who can't but it's not a majority. Again, cars have taught us this helplessness. I just wish I could take car people outside of their reality for just a week or so. Once you see it from the outside it's so apparent. But I guess some people aren't ready to leave the Matrix. And some will fight to protect it.
  - dgfitz 2y ago
    > As for cold, dark, raining. Boo fucking hoo. If you had to go somewhere you'd deal with it. Cars have made people into weak, incapable little creatures. It's honestly pathetic. You clearly have no respect for Mother Nature if this is your stance. Take care.
    - globular-toast 2y ago
      I do, so when I'm in the mountains I check the forecast and keep an eye on the weather. But when I'm in town? You think people are getting caught out by the weather and stranded in town? Where exactly is this "town" you speak of?
wtetzner 2y ago
This us making some pretty big assumptions about what the town in question looks like.
- Bloating 2y ago
  its all like San Francisco
jmclnx 2y ago
I fully agree and look forward to being down modded like you due to lazy people. The only people who live in Cities that should be allowed to use cars are the ones with very real health issues and businesses that transport real physical products to heavy or large to carry. Plus, no Trucks with trailers should be allowed in any city.
nine_k 2y ago
People in a city can comfortably walk and bike in many cases, and take public transport in most other cases. I do, because I live in NYC. But the US has very few cities proper (mostly those which grew big before that advent of the car), and even those have uneven density and thus efficiency of walking or taking a bus. A ton of what the US taste call cities is sprawling low-density almost-suburbia surrounding a few high-density "downtown" areas. See Houston, TX for an impressive example. Biking in such places is possible but tiring, walking is mostly pointless unless you visit your neighbor or a park, and running a subway is uneconomical. Hence, they resort to cars.

dnadler 2y ago

People in US suburbs frequently live several miles from their town center, if they even have a town center at all. Cycling simply isn’t viable to large swaths of the US. There isn’t an easy answer to this either, given that you’d probably need to tear down entire neighborhoods and rebuild a more dense town

Zigurd 2y ago
E-bikes fix most of those problems. A 10 mile trip, out and back, at 20mph, with no concern for loss of momentum at stop signs and lights is easily do-able by anyone who doesn't need mobility aids.
- dnadler 2y ago
  That fixes it for certain types of people, but certainly not for most people in in the north east during winter.
  - Zigurd 2y ago
    Most of the sprawl in America is not in the northeast. E-bikes are perfect for US suburbs.
jeffbee 2y ago
> People in US suburbs frequently live several miles from their town center It is not the responsibility of the citizens of the central city to accommodate suburban drivers.
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  In that case all the retail will go out to the suburbs and they’ll lose the jobs and have to drive out to the suburbs to go shopping. Or just lose the jobs to AMZN warehouses even further away.
  - jeffbee 2y ago
    That is clearly not inevitable which you can demonstrate to yourself by glancing around and pretty much any city on earth.
- dnadler 2y ago
  Well, commutes into a central city is a bit of different beast, and many metros in the US have trains that service the suburbs. Driving in and around the suburbs is what I was talking about.

coliveira 2y ago

You're right, but doing otherwise is almost impossible in North America. Everything is made to benefit big business owning big box retail stores and put mom and pop small retailers out of business. If you don't have a car you may pretty much starve except for a few cities in US and Canada. No wonder online shopping is becoming so popular, it is anti-human to get into a car and then be forced to walk a mile inside a big retail store to make a small purchase.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

LUmBULtERA 2y ago

Except in a lot of places where it’s easy to use public transportation and bikes, it’s still useful to own a car for around town to places a bit further away. Or when it would take you 1.5 hours by public transit (even in areas with good public transit!) vs 0.5 hours by car, on a 110 F day. This thread is about car choice, which doesn’t mean people don’t use other options when they make sense.

Kiro 2y ago
You should at least admit that this is an American problem. No-one in my family has a driver's license and it's not an issue whatsoever. There's very little reason to own a car in a society with a functioning public transport system.
- LUmBULtERA 2y ago
  It’s funny, a couple decades ago I studied in Vienna. I was amazed at how great their public transit was! I didn’t need a car to get around. But I made a local friend there, and at first I was surprised she had a car there. Then, yeah it made sense if you still live somewhere other than city center. Buses to metro to something on the other side of the city could still take a long time. Add cargo, a kid? No, this isn’t an American thing. Go look at how many people own cars across Europe. Plenty of people do.
- SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
  I don't agree with the premise or the conclusion. There's little reason to own a car in a dense, urban area with a functional public transport system. I wouldn't bother to maintain a car if I lived in the middle of Tokyo or Amsterdam, but when you get away from the urban core, most people still own and need cars in Japan and the Netherlands.
- Stagnant 2y ago
  I don't think it is fair to say that it is an "American problem". Not owning a car could be realistic if you live in a really large city where moving with public transport can potentially be faster than moving with a car. But even then I wonder how a family with kids would carry groceries unless you live right next to a supermarket. Often times in HN you get the impression like americans are the only ones using cars to get around, but at least where I live (Finland) families generally own at least one car even if good public transportation is available. In 2021, 89% of adult men and 76% of women had a drivers license and I would say that commuting to work with a car is more common than with public transport. Despite having decent public transportation, it is just seen more convenient to use the car.

dgfitz 2y ago

> People should be walking or cycling around town. This. Is a very out of touch opinion. I could write 20 paragraphs disagreeing, but I doubt it is worth my time to write or anyone else’s to read. Not every person is able-bodied enough to walk and bike. Also, people happen to need to get from A to B when it is cold, dark, raining, extremely hot, snowing, or just some kind of shitty outside. People need to drive to a store for food or supplies that cannot be carried or biked back to the destination. People have multiple children that simply cannot walk or bike. Old people cannot simply walk or bike. This concept of a car-less world is just so completely out of touch with reality, saying it louder isn’t going to change anything.

globular-toast 2y ago
So you think most people are incapable of walking or cycling? And you're saying I'm out of touch?! As for cold, dark, raining. Boo fucking hoo. If you had to go somewhere you'd deal with it. Cars have made people into weak, incapable little creatures. It's honestly pathetic. I cycle with food and supplies in my panniers all the time. What exactly are you buying every week that can't be transported back without fossil fuel assistance? You don't think children can walk or bike? Are you crazy? A healthy child doesn't want to sit still. They're capable of locomotion from about age 3. Old people can get around too. Sure there are some who can't but it's not a majority. Again, cars have taught us this helplessness. I just wish I could take car people outside of their reality for just a week or so. Once you see it from the outside it's so apparent. But I guess some people aren't ready to leave the Matrix. And some will fight to protect it.
- dgfitz 2y ago
  > As for cold, dark, raining. Boo fucking hoo. If you had to go somewhere you'd deal with it. Cars have made people into weak, incapable little creatures. It's honestly pathetic. You clearly have no respect for Mother Nature if this is your stance. Take care.
  - globular-toast 2y ago
    I do, so when I'm in the mountains I check the forecast and keep an eye on the weather. But when I'm in town? You think people are getting caught out by the weather and stranded in town? Where exactly is this "town" you speak of?

wtetzner 2y ago

This us making some pretty big assumptions about what the town in question looks like.

Bloating 2y ago
its all like San Francisco

jmclnx 2y ago

I fully agree and look forward to being down modded like you due to lazy people. The only people who live in Cities that should be allowed to use cars are the ones with very real health issues and businesses that transport real physical products to heavy or large to carry. Plus, no Trucks with trailers should be allowed in any city.

nine_k 2y ago

People in a city can comfortably walk and bike in many cases, and take public transport in most other cases. I do, because I live in NYC. But the US has very few cities proper (mostly those which grew big before that advent of the car), and even those have uneven density and thus efficiency of walking or taking a bus. A ton of what the US taste call cities is sprawling low-density almost-suburbia surrounding a few high-density "downtown" areas. See Houston, TX for an impressive example. Biking in such places is possible but tiring, walking is mostly pointless unless you visit your neighbor or a park, and running a subway is uneconomical. Hence, they resort to cars.