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Comment by selectodude | Hacker News Reader

Driving is, in fact, a luxury. Only the right kind of people can vacation in Vail and I don’t see anyone flipping out about that.

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> Driving is, in fact, a luxury.

Yes, being able to get to the only grocery store several miles away is a luxury. Driving 45 minutes to work because there's no jobs in walking distance other than fast food is a luxury. Going to the only doctor that takes your insurance/medicaid on the other side of town is a luxury.

You're either not from the US or you're so privileged that you cannot conceive the kind of life anyone less fortunate than you leads. Our entire society is built around the assumption that everyone drives. If you don't, then fuck you, get a car you bum. It's your own fault you're suffering. Get some bootstraps and buy a car already, you're just lazy.

If you are in the US, just try going without a car for a month. You won't last more than three days. Then come back and tell me what a luxury it is.

Now imagine how someone less fortunate than yourself, who can’t drive because they’re too young, or too old, or too poor, or too disabled is supposed to survive in a society built around the assumption that everyone drives.

Wow, you're right, that should be a central argument in the case for better public transit or something! I can't believe you're the first person ever to raise this point. Good job!

The current conversation is about cities.

I lived in SF without a car for 7 months. Getting out of the city was a pain in the neck because the weekend Caltrain schedule is terrible (going from Paris to Brussels is faster than San Francisco to Mountain View), getting groceries was inconvenient because I was in the outer sunset, where it is only residential (it hadn't occurred to me that there wouldn't be a suoermarket withing walking distance when looking for housing), and commuting downtown had a monthly delay because of some car getting stuck trying to go into the tunnel in west portal. All of those things are problems that need solving. I now still live in SF, on the other side of GGP, with a supermarket a block away, multiple restaurants and a direct bus line to downtown with a dedicated bus lane. The difference is night and day. I still use the car once a day, but never use it to commute. Cities can be improved. If you live in a suburb and work on an office park, nothing in this conversation will ever affect you, except maybe a potential future where the most radical changes to the city cause you to park on the outskirts and take transit, or pay a premium to drive in in order to go to some event or night out.

My examples were from Cincinnati, one of the major cities in the US.

Unless you live in the downtown proper, you must have a car to survive.

I live in Chicago. I have a car because I can afford that particular luxury. I also didn’t get a drivers license until I was in my 20s and most of my friends continue to not own vehicles. If we, as a society, stopped working backwards from figuring out how to get everybody into a car and instead put that effort into fixing our broken transportation infrastructure that makes assumptions about everybody having 5 figures to own a car, we would all be better off. Were subsidizing Rolexes instead of giving people Casio watches and letting the people who can afford it buy Rolexes.

Driving is a luxury in the fantasy world you want to exist. In the very real world that we have today, it is not.

I agree that cars are bad and we need public transit, but that is not the reality we are in right now. Today in the real world in most of the country, you're fucked if you don't have access to a car. Which is why we need public transit.

Not in the vast majority of North America. It's a necessity

And the argument is that in cities, it shouldn't be.

I fully agree but that's 3-4 decades away if it's ever coming for most cities.

The vast majority of America by acreage has squirrels and deer, water, or crops by sq ft. 4 in 5 citizen lives in an urban area where one could with sufficient investment live without a car.

> The vast majority of America by acreage has squirrels and deer, water, or crops by sq ft.

Very clever, you sure got me.

> 4 in 5 citizen lives in an urban area where one could with sufficient investment live without a car.

Most definitely not. Americans living in a typical suburb have no option except to drive or walk for perhaps hours (often with no sidewalks) to get basic necessities. Even within the vast majority of US cities, typically it's a minority of neighborhoods well serviced by walkable amenities and transit, and the rest are still car-dependent.

Again, walking 45+ minutes for basic errands is not a reasonable ask. Bike infrastructure is usually lacking or absent and is forbiddingly dangerous to people who aren't strong and confident bicyclists.

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