Comment by Fricken
19 hours ago
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?