Comment by ericmay
11 hours ago
The safest car is the one that is parked. I’m not anti-car but in terms of safety we should focus more on getting people using bus/rail/bike/walk especially for daily needs. It’s more cost effective too. Autonomous cars are cool and will be great for reducing crashes, but it’s an additive solution, not a subtractive one.
This will work for a few cities like New York or San Francisco but not for rural communities and won't be efficient for smaller cities or towns that are spread out. At least not without sacrificing independency and speed, which we're constantly trying to escape from
If you’re thinking about New York and San Francisco when you’re thinking about transportation you are starting off on the wrong frame of reference. Think more like a random city or town in Europe, perhaps Bordeaux since I was recently reading about it. Smaller cities/towns with tiny populations shouldn’t dictate how everyone else lives and suck up resources and taxpayer dollars for asinine highway projects.
Most of America lives in urban areas. Rural communities, where they exist, have no need to change. Running busses out there doesn’t make sense. What also doesn’t make sense is, for example, in Ohio the Ohio Department of Highways (ODOT) spending a billion dollars to “ease congestion” in downtown Columbus, Ohio so that folks can live further away and drive to work or whatever. It’s a tax subsidy that I don’t think we should pay, and it’s not a good use of money objectively either.
Second we don’t have to make this trade off you are imagining. I live in a European style (as close as you can probably get in America) neighborhood with shops and restaurants within walking distance. I also have a large garage (with only one car) and live in a single family home, and live alongside duplexes, triplexes, big houses, small houses, shops, and more. Today I can use my car as you’d expect. But what’s missing is the ability to not use my car to go to the grocery store and get a steak or something.
With respect to safety you can just avoid the problem by switching products. Walk, bike, rail and you don’t have to get in a car crash.
The trade-offs that folks think must exist simply do not exist. The trade-offs are do we spend an absorbent amount of money, have more people die, face insurance premiums that increase with no recourse, have to be upset at gas prices, &c.
Or do we just not do that?
It’s okay to be anti-car. Even if you own a car and use it regularly. There’s more than enough reasons to be anti-car. Just pick your favorite.
Yes, instead of fixing the problem let's go back 100 years and start walking everywhere. It's easy for someone that works for home or an in office, but most people truly rely on their cars, otherwise they would lose hours everyday...
Public transit is not "100 years back". London, uk is not exactly backwards looking in that sense, and the vast majority of people use trains/metto to go to work.
I walk 10k steps a day on a normal day, only drive when necessary to go out of my normal routes. This has an added benefit of keeping me, an aging programmer, in shape (as well as other relevant activities).
Nothing dramatic about it at all.
Most people in societies built car-first/only (USA) truly rely on their cars. The situation is not the same in big parts of Europe and Asia. We can go 100 years forward and fund public infrastructure which is better for the environment, more safe and gives a much higher socio-economic value (except for the highway lobby).
It is healthy to walk. You should be walking probably an hour a day at least if we are being honest. You are made to hunt and forage all day, not sit down. Use it or lose it.