5 ms·

People can rant and rail about America's car-centric culture, or they could just accept that the culture is what it is and work to mitigate the negative aspects

People can rant and rail about America's car-centric culture, or they could just accept that the culture is what it is and work to mitigate the negative aspects of it. I don't get why so many people feel they need to tilt at windmills this way.

harimau777 2y ago
The problem is that there's not really a way to mitigate those negative aspects. Car centric culture is almost universally miserable.
toomuchtodo 2y ago
So, I think the problem is that the culture is unsustainable [1] [2]. Look at new vehicle prices [3]. Look at the operating cost of a vehicle [4]. For many, currently, this cost is at least if not more than $1000/month (car note, insurance, fuel, etc) and very roughly, ~60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Vehicle repos [5] and auto loan delinquencies [6] are hitting historical highs. America built a structurally deficient urban planning model. In Iowa, for example, they are allowing roads to go back to gravel because they lack the resources to maintain the status quo of road infra [7]. Also, consider rural america continues to wither and clear out [8]. This is all important ground truth to have to mitigate the negative aspects as you say, versus throwing good money after bad. Maybe we could encourage folks to migrate to college towns from the exurbs with subsidies and job guarantees, versus them staying in place while where they exist today rapidly declines. They would then continue to support the town as residents through their social security or pension income they would spend locally through retirement until death. New urban builds take decades while retrofits and reconfigurations take much less time, effort, and fiat. "Skate to where the puck is going to be." [1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/7/22/what-strong-towns-really-says-about-infrastructure-spending https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/7/22/what-strong-to... [2] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/9/20/the-suburbs-are-a-one-life-cycle-product https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/9/20/the-suburbs-ar... [3] https://www.financialsamurai.com/average-new-car-price/ https://www.financialsamurai.com/average-new-car-price/ [4] https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/total-cost-owning-car https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/total-co... [5] https://www.pymnts.com/transportation/2025/car-repos-hit-levels-unseen-since-2008-financial-crisis/ https://www.pymnts.com/transportation/2025/car-repos-hit-lev... [6] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-06/late-car-loan-payments-auto-delinquencies-spike-to-highest-level-in-decades https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-06/late-car-... | https://archive.today/dfCjJ https://archive.today/dfCjJ [7] https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/03/11/who-will-be-left-to-pay-for-rural-iowas-roads/ https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/03/11/who-will-be-left-... [8] https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/rural-america-lost-population-over-past-decade-first-time-history https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/rural-america-lost-popula... (draw your attention to "Figure 2. Population Change In Nonmetropolitan Counties, 2010 To 2020") (think in systems)
- the_snooze 2y ago
  To bring it down to a real and concrete case, we can do so much better than each family ferrying their children to school/activites, then driving everywhere in single-occupant cars. That's a world where children and senior citizens have greatly reduced independence and community. How would it look like if there were reduced day-to-day car dependency? Maybe something like this: a "walking schoolbus" where senior citizens and schoolchildren connect with one another as they get exercise on the way to school. Who wouldn't want that? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeYBL5u97c8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeYBL5u97c8
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    I really like the Barcelona Superblocks model [1] for existing urban environments, but subsidizing families to relocate closer to schools is also an option imho. You have to find the intersection of what is politically palatable and the resources available; the next 100 years is going to see structural demographic decline, declining working cohort participation, less growth and productivity, continuing rapid fertility rate decline, declining household sizes, etc so creativity and flexibility will be required (imho). I am also a fan of what Culdesac [2] is doing, and is a pattern to be scaled. “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” got us cars, and I think the new question is "How do we deliver locality and mobility for quality lives without cars, when possible?" Cars are not going away, but we should not build for them specifically as if they were the default option, as this cost burdens the future with potentially unnecessary and expensive personal mobility and infrastructure obligations. Even today, they are unaffordable for a substantial population of people, based on the evidence in my comment above. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=barcelona+superblocks https://hn.algolia.com/?q=barcelona+superblocks [2] https://culdesac.com/ https://culdesac.com/
    - crooked-v 2y ago
      > subsidizing families to relocate closer to schools Without changing the US' urban model to actually allow more homes, all that will do is keep the status quo and make everything more expensive.
itishappy 2y ago
> People can rant and rail about America's car-centric culture, or they could just accept that the culture is what it is and work to mitigate the negative aspects of it. Honest question: What's the difference? Mitigating the negative aspects involves making others aware of the negative aspects, but many people see that as ranting and railing. What does a productive conversation look like?
- kortilla 2y ago
  You’re assuming all of the negative aspects require giving up cars to solve
  - itishappy 2y ago
    I don't think we need to give up cars entirely, but I also don't think we'll be able to address the negative aspects without some amount of change. An example: I live roughly 200m from the Costco in the center of town, but there's a major 4 lane road between us. Walking would be so convenient, but it's so much safer to drive. A footbridge would address this without impacting drivers. I have no intentions of giving up my car, but this particular activity would be so much nicer without it!
  - xanderstrike 2y ago
    The simple geometry problem of how much space cars take up is arguably the worst now (given tailpipe emissions are on their way out), and there is no solution to that outside of fewer and much smaller cars.
- jimbob45 2y ago
  People acknowledge that America is bigger than their country with challenging geographical features. They also stop comparing their best country (UK) with America’s worst state or, even worse, the entire US landmass.
  - nlarew 2y ago
    Total strawman argument. The size of the country has almost no bearing on the way we develop our towns and cities, subsidize car production, assume/require car ownership in public policy, etc. It's also quite the stretch to claim the UK as the best country in the EU and even more to claim that it doesn't also have a car culture. And it's not just "America's worst state", the vast majority of US town and cities are car dependent.
dkarl 2y ago
Policy is decided by people. "Car-centric culture" is just a description of the material status quo, much of which was built by people who are dead, who have changed their minds about cars, or who see different conditions in their city and now want a different approach. An orientation towards adopting new ways of living when the old ones become impractical or harmful can be just as part of a person's "culture" as a piece of technology.
- tmnvix 2y ago
  > Policy is decided by people. Well yes, corporations are considered 'people'. I think it was some of these 'people' that tore up the streetcar networks in order to replace them with buses.
iambateman 2y ago
Because 40,000 people a year die on roads as a result of their design. Please don’t accept 100 extra funerals a day. It can and will get better.
- mantas 2y ago
  Changing road design is not necessarily a cultural change from driving. My country had very bad traffic deaths record. few decades later, traffic is much more intense and there're many more cars, but traffic deaths are waaaaaay down. Thanks to better infrastructure, better cars and better culture especially when it comes to drink and drive...
screye 2y ago
That's the issue. You can't mitigate it. Especially when even the lowest hanging fruits (eg: protected bike lines) face similar opposition as any radical change. America already bulldozed through walkable streetcar towns for cars less than a century ago. So, the precedent for the change is there. It's not like cars are the way of the ancestors As another comment mentioned, car infrastructure is an unsustainable spend. America is entering an era of expensive labor, lower fertility and bi-polar super powers. Therefore, unsustainable systems are beginning to give. It's tempting to call car centrism a personal preference. But North America stands alone against a near-global consensus on what urban infrastructure should look like.
- parpfish 2y ago
  Another potential factor driving the US’s reckoning with car centric development is the aging of the boomer generation. At some point, there’s going to be a large number of cities where a majority of homeowners are too old to drive.
  - hx8 2y ago
    > At some point, there’s going to be a large number of cities where a majority of homeowners are too old to drive. If you're too old to drive you're probably also not in the best position to walk far or walk while carrying shopping/groceries. Combined with the obesity epidemic many people simply aren't healthy enough to walk 1km.
    - mitthrowaway2 2y ago
      Mobility challenged people can take electric wheelchairs along sidewalks and bike routes, and board buses and trains with level boarding. These usually have storage for groceries. Some elderly people are physically capable of driving a car but can be a danger on the road.
  - nebula8804 2y ago
    Probably why so many are moving to 'retirement communities' so they can downgrade to golf carts. You can take the car away from the person but the soul of the boomer is the automobile. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7leRLIxw7oc https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7leRLIxw7oc
bobthepanda 2y ago
The problem is that mitigation of any kind is an affront to car driving culture. One big problem people have, for example, is that we just focus so much on roads and there is literally no safe infrastructure for other kinds of people; but drivers also balk at using taxpayer money to build said infrastructure, particularly if it is perceived as reducing driver convenience even by mere seconds. Or even pausing the construction of new, dangerous infrastructure.
xanderstrike 2y ago
95% of people drive because 95% of transportation funding goes to enabling that choice. People at large are rational and will make rational transportation choices given incentives. The incentives are all aligned towards driving right now because that benefits the auto industry. You cannot make assertions about how Americans behave, "culturally," based on their transportation choices because these choices are not happening in a vacuum. Case in point: when Americans visit Disneyland, or NYC, or Amsterdam, they do not typically insist on driving through those places.
- nebula8804 2y ago
  You seem to be implying there is something nefarious about how the incentives were created. Yes there has been efforts to push cars over other options and thats well documented but you can't just ignore that part of the incentive naturally leaned towards utilizing the large amount of available land. Its just human nature to use all available resources if they are available to you.
janalsncm 2y ago
“Tilting at windmills” makes it sound like a pointless and impossible task. I don’t even agree that this is a culture problem. It’s an infrastructure problem wrapped up in tyranny of the minority NIMBY politics. But even if we accept your premise that American “culture” prefers cars (rather than being a result of decades of expanding as fast and as cheaply as possible across the country), culture can change. It does change.

harimau777 2y ago

The problem is that there's not really a way to mitigate those negative aspects. Car centric culture is almost universally miserable.

toomuchtodo 2y ago

So, I think the problem is that the culture is unsustainable [1] [2]. Look at new vehicle prices [3]. Look at the operating cost of a vehicle [4]. For many, currently, this cost is at least if not more than $1000/month (car note, insurance, fuel, etc) and very roughly, ~60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Vehicle repos [5] and auto loan delinquencies [6] are hitting historical highs. America built a structurally deficient urban planning model. In Iowa, for example, they are allowing roads to go back to gravel because they lack the resources to maintain the status quo of road infra [7]. Also, consider rural america continues to wither and clear out [8]. This is all important ground truth to have to mitigate the negative aspects as you say, versus throwing good money after bad. Maybe we could encourage folks to migrate to college towns from the exurbs with subsidies and job guarantees, versus them staying in place while where they exist today rapidly declines. They would then continue to support the town as residents through their social security or pension income they would spend locally through retirement until death. New urban builds take decades while retrofits and reconfigurations take much less time, effort, and fiat. "Skate to where the puck is going to be." [1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/7/22/what-strong-towns-really-says-about-infrastructure-spending https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/7/22/what-strong-to... [2] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/9/20/the-suburbs-are-a-one-life-cycle-product https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/9/20/the-suburbs-ar... [3] https://www.financialsamurai.com/average-new-car-price/ https://www.financialsamurai.com/average-new-car-price/ [4] https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/total-cost-owning-car https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/total-co... [5] https://www.pymnts.com/transportation/2025/car-repos-hit-levels-unseen-since-2008-financial-crisis/ https://www.pymnts.com/transportation/2025/car-repos-hit-lev... [6] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-06/late-car-loan-payments-auto-delinquencies-spike-to-highest-level-in-decades https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-06/late-car-... | https://archive.today/dfCjJ https://archive.today/dfCjJ [7] https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/03/11/who-will-be-left-to-pay-for-rural-iowas-roads/ https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/03/11/who-will-be-left-... [8] https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/rural-america-lost-population-over-past-decade-first-time-history https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/rural-america-lost-popula... (draw your attention to "Figure 2. Population Change In Nonmetropolitan Counties, 2010 To 2020") (think in systems)

the_snooze 2y ago
To bring it down to a real and concrete case, we can do so much better than each family ferrying their children to school/activites, then driving everywhere in single-occupant cars. That's a world where children and senior citizens have greatly reduced independence and community. How would it look like if there were reduced day-to-day car dependency? Maybe something like this: a "walking schoolbus" where senior citizens and schoolchildren connect with one another as they get exercise on the way to school. Who wouldn't want that? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeYBL5u97c8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeYBL5u97c8
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  I really like the Barcelona Superblocks model [1] for existing urban environments, but subsidizing families to relocate closer to schools is also an option imho. You have to find the intersection of what is politically palatable and the resources available; the next 100 years is going to see structural demographic decline, declining working cohort participation, less growth and productivity, continuing rapid fertility rate decline, declining household sizes, etc so creativity and flexibility will be required (imho). I am also a fan of what Culdesac [2] is doing, and is a pattern to be scaled. “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” got us cars, and I think the new question is "How do we deliver locality and mobility for quality lives without cars, when possible?" Cars are not going away, but we should not build for them specifically as if they were the default option, as this cost burdens the future with potentially unnecessary and expensive personal mobility and infrastructure obligations. Even today, they are unaffordable for a substantial population of people, based on the evidence in my comment above. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=barcelona+superblocks https://hn.algolia.com/?q=barcelona+superblocks [2] https://culdesac.com/ https://culdesac.com/
  - crooked-v 2y ago
    > subsidizing families to relocate closer to schools Without changing the US' urban model to actually allow more homes, all that will do is keep the status quo and make everything more expensive.

itishappy 2y ago

> People can rant and rail about America's car-centric culture, or they could just accept that the culture is what it is and work to mitigate the negative aspects of it. Honest question: What's the difference? Mitigating the negative aspects involves making others aware of the negative aspects, but many people see that as ranting and railing. What does a productive conversation look like?

kortilla 2y ago
You’re assuming all of the negative aspects require giving up cars to solve
- itishappy 2y ago
  I don't think we need to give up cars entirely, but I also don't think we'll be able to address the negative aspects without some amount of change. An example: I live roughly 200m from the Costco in the center of town, but there's a major 4 lane road between us. Walking would be so convenient, but it's so much safer to drive. A footbridge would address this without impacting drivers. I have no intentions of giving up my car, but this particular activity would be so much nicer without it!
- xanderstrike 2y ago
  The simple geometry problem of how much space cars take up is arguably the worst now (given tailpipe emissions are on their way out), and there is no solution to that outside of fewer and much smaller cars.
jimbob45 2y ago
People acknowledge that America is bigger than their country with challenging geographical features. They also stop comparing their best country (UK) with America’s worst state or, even worse, the entire US landmass.
- nlarew 2y ago
  Total strawman argument. The size of the country has almost no bearing on the way we develop our towns and cities, subsidize car production, assume/require car ownership in public policy, etc. It's also quite the stretch to claim the UK as the best country in the EU and even more to claim that it doesn't also have a car culture. And it's not just "America's worst state", the vast majority of US town and cities are car dependent.

dkarl 2y ago

Policy is decided by people. "Car-centric culture" is just a description of the material status quo, much of which was built by people who are dead, who have changed their minds about cars, or who see different conditions in their city and now want a different approach. An orientation towards adopting new ways of living when the old ones become impractical or harmful can be just as part of a person's "culture" as a piece of technology.

tmnvix 2y ago
> Policy is decided by people. Well yes, corporations are considered 'people'. I think it was some of these 'people' that tore up the streetcar networks in order to replace them with buses.

iambateman 2y ago

Because 40,000 people a year die on roads as a result of their design. Please don’t accept 100 extra funerals a day. It can and will get better.

mantas 2y ago
Changing road design is not necessarily a cultural change from driving. My country had very bad traffic deaths record. few decades later, traffic is much more intense and there're many more cars, but traffic deaths are waaaaaay down. Thanks to better infrastructure, better cars and better culture especially when it comes to drink and drive...

screye 2y ago

That's the issue. You can't mitigate it. Especially when even the lowest hanging fruits (eg: protected bike lines) face similar opposition as any radical change. America already bulldozed through walkable streetcar towns for cars less than a century ago. So, the precedent for the change is there. It's not like cars are the way of the ancestors As another comment mentioned, car infrastructure is an unsustainable spend. America is entering an era of expensive labor, lower fertility and bi-polar super powers. Therefore, unsustainable systems are beginning to give. It's tempting to call car centrism a personal preference. But North America stands alone against a near-global consensus on what urban infrastructure should look like.

parpfish 2y ago
Another potential factor driving the US’s reckoning with car centric development is the aging of the boomer generation. At some point, there’s going to be a large number of cities where a majority of homeowners are too old to drive.
- hx8 2y ago
  > At some point, there’s going to be a large number of cities where a majority of homeowners are too old to drive. If you're too old to drive you're probably also not in the best position to walk far or walk while carrying shopping/groceries. Combined with the obesity epidemic many people simply aren't healthy enough to walk 1km.
  - mitthrowaway2 2y ago
    Mobility challenged people can take electric wheelchairs along sidewalks and bike routes, and board buses and trains with level boarding. These usually have storage for groceries. Some elderly people are physically capable of driving a car but can be a danger on the road.
- nebula8804 2y ago
  Probably why so many are moving to 'retirement communities' so they can downgrade to golf carts. You can take the car away from the person but the soul of the boomer is the automobile. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7leRLIxw7oc https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7leRLIxw7oc

bobthepanda 2y ago

The problem is that mitigation of any kind is an affront to car driving culture. One big problem people have, for example, is that we just focus so much on roads and there is literally no safe infrastructure for other kinds of people; but drivers also balk at using taxpayer money to build said infrastructure, particularly if it is perceived as reducing driver convenience even by mere seconds. Or even pausing the construction of new, dangerous infrastructure.

xanderstrike 2y ago

95% of people drive because 95% of transportation funding goes to enabling that choice. People at large are rational and will make rational transportation choices given incentives. The incentives are all aligned towards driving right now because that benefits the auto industry. You cannot make assertions about how Americans behave, "culturally," based on their transportation choices because these choices are not happening in a vacuum. Case in point: when Americans visit Disneyland, or NYC, or Amsterdam, they do not typically insist on driving through those places.

nebula8804 2y ago
You seem to be implying there is something nefarious about how the incentives were created. Yes there has been efforts to push cars over other options and thats well documented but you can't just ignore that part of the incentive naturally leaned towards utilizing the large amount of available land. Its just human nature to use all available resources if they are available to you.

janalsncm 2y ago

“Tilting at windmills” makes it sound like a pointless and impossible task. I don’t even agree that this is a culture problem. It’s an infrastructure problem wrapped up in tyranny of the minority NIMBY politics. But even if we accept your premise that American “culture” prefers cars (rather than being a result of decades of expanding as fast and as cheaply as possible across the country), culture can change. It does change.