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Comment by vanilla_nut | Hacker News Reader

I haven't found a solution yet. But I find this especially crippling when our country also forces us to drive to do literally anything, even go for a walk. Particularly during the wintertime, it's crippling my ability to go anywhere or do anything.

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The only solution I can think of is for myself to buy a lifted truck or other similar unnecessarily large vehicle. I haven't done this, of course, but if I did I'd then be part of the problem but at least my eye line would be above that of the majority of other drivers. We have a sedan and a small SUV - I don't drive the sedan at night ever because of the headlight problem. My eyes hurt just thinking about this.

There are places in the US where that's not true. You made the personal decision not to live in one of them.

Such as?

Actually I made a personal decision to live in a walkable place. Repeatedly. But of course people still insist on driving their cars (often dangerously) in my area, regardless of how walkable that place is.

Please share some walkable, bikeable places in the USA here. I really want to live in one but my research reveals very few options where you aren't extremely likely to be run over by a vehicle if you dare to walk or bike exclusively, especially at night.

My criteria requires a grocery store, a coffee shop, and some kind of watering hole with food (brewery or pub) an easy walk from my door. It's amazing how few of those places exist in the USA, and how expensive they can be when you find one.

When arguing about societal/legal/political things that have anything to do with location, people frequently imply that there is no friction to picking where you live or moving. As if people are born into the world as adults and the first thing they do is pick from a list of every available home in the country in their price range, with infinite time and information to make their choice, and then they and their job and family and friends and possessions are all teleported there. And they can do this again as often as they want at any point. It's frankly nuts. "Uncharitable" and "oversimplified" are not really strong enough words for how dramatic the fallacy of "just live somewhere else" is.

It's not an honest consideration of the issue at hand, just a sneering dismissal of a real problem. You see the same sentiment whenever someone wants to seem like they're considering something intellectually when in reality they refuse to entertain the idea seriously at all. They just want you to shut up about it.

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