Comment by jeffbee
24 days ago
Pedibus. So civilized. People in California don't believe half the things I tell them about life in Switzerland, such as "if you try to drive your kid to school the cops will chastise you" and "if you drive 40 in a school zone you'll automatically get a year in jail" and, of course, "gas is nine bucks".
The US is extremely car focused, which they often don't really realize. Things that are normal here (like everybody has a bike) conflicts with their cyclers vs drivers culture. Such a distinction simply does not exist here. Instead we have roads that are red with signs "Cars are guests". Or indeed city centers where cars aren't allowed.
When I go to the US I'm often surprised that you can't get to things that are only a km away by foot because a road is blocking you, no way to cross it.
On holiday in the Florida we walked to the gated entrance to the community to ask whether delivery drivers got access or we needed to pick it up at the gate. The way they looked at us, you would think we had two heads for arriving on foot.
I got into an argument with a security guard at a gated community who tried to demand we give him a name, address, and "what's going on?" before he'd let us in.
Fixed that when I asked if he personally called 911 and when he said no, "So, before we make this a lot more formal, are you understanding that you are now obstructing emergency services personnel in the performance of duty?"
I once walked into a drive through in Texas (Galveston) with a group of scientists there for a conference (because main restaurant was closed), we almost got shot (no not really but people felt very very threatened and threatened us)!
In Florida gated communities, the standard transportation method is individual overpriced golf karts.
The last time I was in the US - a couple of decades ago, I admit - people were aghast that we walked to a store just a few hundred meters away.
3 people stopped and asked whether they can drive us somewhere... I mean, super friendly people, but... it's just a few hundred meters, come on!
You were the wild west, once!
My mother tells much the same from when we Australians were in Denver for five months in 1996 about walking a kilometre to school. Also mild astonishment at ideas like baking cakes not from a packet mix.
Mind you, there weren’t many who would walk to school like that in Australia, and the number has continued to dwindle. But there were some.
To be fair, there are an embarrassingly large number of places in the US where safely walking to a store a few hundred meters away would be very difficult at best.
Well, everybody rode their horse everywhere in the Wild West.
This happened to me in Germany. To be fair, I was walking 10km on a rural road with two suitcases and no sidewalk.
The US has very low standards for its lifestyle.
We're told we are number ONE in everything but in fact its usually 40 or 20 when you actually go look at things that matter.
We never really notice because we think filling a big house in the suburbs with garbage from Costco is living the dream.
As a naturalized American who lived in 3 other countries including two in Europe and who travels often all over the world, married to a European, etc I must say the US has its perks and it’s definitely in my top 5 countries to live. I lived mostly in the south and the east coast so I don’t have a full picture of the US as a resident. But it’s the same in Europe, living in Berlin is very different than living in Sicily, even Milan is very different than Sicily being the same country. So to be fair the US should be compared to Europe not to a particular country. The car culture in the US I think is fine because the country is built around it, the interstate system is pretty good and gas is cheap. I do like road trips very much, at my own pace not having to worry about train/flight schedules. In Europe taking long family road trips by car as we do in the US would be prohibited and even stupid in the eyes of many Europeans. I also like that you can talk to Americans everywhere and get to know people. In Europe you start talking to a stranger they look at you like you went crazy. Being social is part of having a good quality of life too, so the US ranks pretty high there.
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Our school started a chaperoned bicycle bus, and it’s enabled a number of kids who live 3-5 km away to engage in active transportation once a week that would have otherwise been unable to.
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