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Comment by TazeTSchnitzel | Hacker News Reader

Another way to reduce road accidents would be to reduce Americans' dependence on cars. Better for the environment too.

It's not dependence, it's preference. Americans (and most everyone else) like to control their 4-vecor.

Having spent quite a bit of time in the US, I've noticed that getting somewhere there takes about the same amount time as home (which happens to be Sweden, hence me clicking the link). As an anecdotal example, some common times for me were about as follows: Going to work, 15 minutes. Grocery store, 5 minutes. Larger shopping mall, 30 minutes. The difference is that in the US that time is spent driving, while home it's walking/biking. So my control of my local 4-vector is essentially equivalent, just with a different space scaling factor applied.

I can get anywhere in my local city in the time it takes me to jump in my car and drive there. Comparing that with walking to a bus stop and waiting for it to get near my destination is not even remotely close, _and I wouldn't want to even if it was faster_. Talking about speed (while important) ignores the ability to instantly change your plan.

Your experience might work in a closely spaced situation (hence your odd comparison of moving at a magnitude difference velocity), where most people pick the same mall and live close to eachother, but that's not how large countries work.

Walking/Biking also allows me to instantly change my plans, even more so than driving does (try turning around instantly in a car). What do you mean "low large countries work"? The absolute size of a country is irrelevant (what New Yorker cares what malls there are in Kentucky?), what matters is population/service density. The US has a 50% larger population density than Sweden, so it should be able to support at least as dense cities and services. The difference not economic or technical, but cultural.

It's cultural and technical. We value our time and large KE control. It's also nice being wrapped in steel with airbags. You could ride for an hour, and I could drive for 15min and we have gone the same distance. If we both then change our minds, I need to backtrack 15 min.

Not to mention, try carrying the things I put in my 5700lb car (without any planning) on your bike.

I made the math easy, but it's the same arg if it's 45. The only legit arg I can come up for your point is sometimes I want to run or ride a bike, but in that case, I'm going to avoid roads even if it's 100% 3 cylinders Geo's, or just follow my routine and exercise at the gym since it's more fun than running alone to xyz when I really just need to get something done.

Country size has nothing to do with it. Tearing down downtowns to put in parking lots, forcing buildings to be surrounded by seas of asphalt, and density restrictions could be related.

Also it should be mentioned that your driving makes the city less pleasant and more dangerous to walk or cycle in, encouraging others to drive, in an unfortunate feedback loop.

You are making too many assumptions. It's easy to design city centers so it's not worth the trouble for most people to drive through them. Downtown my city is like that. We drive around it. I have seen the opposite, your worst case, but that's their fault. And ya, distance matters. I live only ~6 miles from where I work, and I rode a bike for a year, but I can drive it in a fraction of the time and then not worry about changing plans or going somewhere much further away without first pedaling myself home.

It works both ways, if the majority drives then you are left with no infrastructure for people who don't drive, hence you become dependent on driving.

In many places it’s dependence. If everything you need requires traveling miles without good sidewalks, bike lanes, etc. and the population density is too low for public transit, a car is a requirement.

I'm trying to not pick one thing and run with it, so I'll kinda ignore the miles without sidewalks thing, so consider bike lanes, if it's rural, why bother? Bike lanes make sense (kinda) in a high car density only.

Have you considered that some people deliberately don't live in cities structured around that because they consider not using (or paying for the infrastructure of) public transit a good thing?

Yikes, you wouldn't catch me on a bike on most roads in any of the rural areas that I've ever lived in (northeast). Good way to get creamed by a pulp truck - maybe 25% of roads have a paved shoulder, and those that do are typically high-speed (55mph), high-traffic routes.

Why is it culturally acceptable to murder people in the US?

Part of it is that we make a lot of excuses for drivers since car ownership was a key part of the American self image for the 20th century. That also meant that there was an assumption that bicyclist meant poor and often non-white, adding that pressure to assume the victim was at fault.

The self-image and idea of what a successful American is supposed to look like wasn’t something I thought about until my cycling group had unpleasant encounters with bitterly resentful drivers in San Diego county. All middle-aged or older white guys driving expensive vehicles, clearly unimpressed by California law if it involves sharing with people unlike them. I should also note that our group was rather scrupulous about the rules of the road so it wasn’t a case of escalating bad behavior.

I used to commute via bicycle from South Park to Clairemont Mesa. It was horrendously unpleasant, with close-passes and swearing all. the. time.

Tellingly SD will put in really nice bike lanes where there's already tons of empty space (Genesee in the middle of nowhere) but where you really need it, like University ave. in Hillcrest, they fight tooth and nail against it.

They like pretending to be bike friendly, at least! Nobody loves a good render more than them, and tour de fat is good fun.

That really drove me up the wall - near perfect cycling weather year round, tons of space for long connector routes (I used to do San Carlos to Torrey Pines), and then bitter opposition to any attempt to make key intersections or neighborhood access easier.

When you have nothing left to reach for, what card gets played? True or not, it's like clockwork. And using CA cities as an example is downright funny/offensive to most Americans (including most CA'ians) btw.

Because when someone does it with their car, the jury empathizes with the driver over the victim. The person who was killed is the "other".

In countries where more people cycle and walk it can be the driver who is the "other" but that's rarely if ever the case in the US.

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