Comment by EA-3167
15 hours ago
The famously small conurbations and the reality that Finns and Norwegians only are able to bike part of the year. They have cars and public transit for the rest.
I'd add that these discussions tend to handwave the reality of safety when you're on an open platform movie at high speeds, the reality that not all people are physically able, and a lot of others issues that the vocal "cars are the devil" folks don't engage seriously with.
It's getting really old, and it increasingly feels like trying to reason with the "kill all pitbulls" crowd.
> Finns and Norwegians only are able to bike part of the year.
They very much bike all year round, even in the north where it regularly gets to -20C(-4F) in winter. Biking in snowy sub-freezing weather is really not a big deal as long as you maintain the bike paths as well as the streets.
Source: have lived there, everyone I knew had a bike they regularly used. The only time I can recall where people I knew who usually commuted by bike didn't do so was during an unusually heavy snowstorm. They instead had to walk about half a kilometer to/from where the city had managed to plow the streets and take a taxi. That was decades ago.
I'd really recommend you watch the 2nd video about Oulu which addresses literally every single point you just made.
Scandanavians have been getting around without cars for millenia. Nobody had even heard of a car until just over a century ago.
Car dependent infrastructure is definitely not helpful for the physically disabled, as well as those too young, too old, and too poor to drive a car. This and a lot of other issues that the vocal and active "cars aren't the devil" crowd don't engage seriously with.
It's getting really old, and increasingly feels like trying to reason with the "Pitbulls make great family dogs" crowd.
Same with electricity, dentistry, antibiotics...
"People have been giving birth since the first humans existed, why go to a hospital?"
"People have been living with viruses for all of history and beyond, why use vaccines?"
"People have been walking for millions of years, why use a bike or a scooter?"
Hospitals at the dawn of the 19th century in Europe were generally places only poor people in desperate situations went to give birth because they were hives of disease transmission.
The notion that doctors should wash their hands between treating one patient and the next was met with ridicule. Doctors were insulted by the suggestion that their hands might be unclean, so mortality rates for childbirth in hospitals were horrendous. The idea of handwashing emerged and died many times before it finally caught on, and then only at the behest of vigorous campaigning over a generation.
There is a long list of hidden costs and negative externalities associated with car dependent sprawl as well, they are well studied, but nobody want to hear that their hands are unclean. This idea one should be washing their hands a dozens times per shift is patently absurd. Physicians would be wasting hours a day just washing their hands! How would we be able to treat all these patients?