Cars need roads and parking space, those take away other people's chance to have a quiet, safe, pleasant city center just as much.

It's not a matter of one side being authoritarian, there's conflicting interests.

Cities are older than most of the people living there. People know what they get when they move to a city and pay higher prices for that. For quiet there are better cheaper options, ones where you don’t have the noise of sharing buildings and walls with others above, below, and beside you. Obviously if one person wants cars and another doesn’t it will come down to how many want that, but moving to a city for quiet is like wanting to go swimming without getting wet.

Cities are also much older than the car infrastructure in them.

Cities can be changed: in Utrecht, Netherlands they removed an entire motorway to restore the old moat and a more pedestrian / bicycle friendly environment ( https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/motorway-remov... ). Many cities ban cars from the city center, restrict them to 30 km/h or one way streets, or make parking prohibitively expensive.

People come to cities because of all the other people there, not because there are so many parking lots.

> right to a quiet, safe, pleasant city center

Wait...these are rights now?

Who do I sue for not having any of these?

I didn't intend to enter that discussion with that word choice, so I changed it.

It's funny how banning single occupancy vehicles is out of the question for being overly authoritarian (you're downvoted on HN, but I bet you'll win most actual votes in actual American cities), but designing a city center with no roads so no vehicles can use them isn't usually considered authoritarian. People have weird intuitions about rights and commons.

Because a car is much more dangerous than a bike and regulated much looser than a bus or a truck. There's a high likelihood on an auto heavy street that as a cyclist I gravely hurt myself or lose my life while the driver only had to pay a fine and or higher insurance. I'd gladly support an alternative where any accident with a cyclist or a pedestrian results in immediate license seizure, but that's even more politically dead in the water than closing a street off from cars in the US. Cars in the US are very lightly regulated heavy machinery.

> I'd gladly support an alternative where any accident with a cyclist or a pedestrian results in immediate license seizure

If I'm going the speed limit, and a pedestrian on the sidewalk 6 inches away from me (because someone decided that narrow lanes are better) decides to step in front of me, not at a crosswalk, avoiding an accident would require me to have a negative reaction time. Are you saying I'd deserve to have my license seized in that case?

> If I'm going the speed limit, and a pedestrian on the sidewalk 6 inches away from me [...] decides to step in front of me

Which she presumably had to do to avoid the oncoming double stroller without diving into the pile of trash bags awaiting pickup.

I disagree with the GP, this isn't merely about penalties for drivers. We've allocated an inordinate portion of available space to large metal vehicles carrying just one or two humans each, and left the scraps to be shared between all pedestrians, skateboarders, outdoor restaurants, parking meters, trash bags, trees, and all manner of other things. Because of course, you can't put the trees in the middle of the street, what would all the cars do? And then the pedestrians also spend 20% of their time waiting at traffic lights that are only necessary because cars are death machines that can't stop quickly enough.

The fact that avoiding an accident "would require [you] to have a negative reaction time" is exactly why cars are inappropriate for busy city centers.

Yes and get it back after police/judge agrees that it isn't your fault. Right now damages are not proportionate between drivers and anyone else, so a rational actor will drive. If this is acceptable I'll take it and let cars gladly downtown. Elsewise, I'll take a ban on cars in downtown streets.

> get it back after police/judge agrees that it isn't your fault

You're advocating for a guilty-until-proven-innocent system?

If I need to accept the risk of maiming to play, the other side does not, and both of us are innocent until proven guilty, then I'm not playing unless I really have no alternative. Unsurprisingly this is what actually happens in the US; only a few people proportionally actually use non car modes on streets. The majority are those that have no other option, either because they cannot own a car for cost reasons or other physical or legal reasons (physical disability, suspended licenses, etc).

> You're advocating for a guilty-until-proven-innocent system?

Come on, stop putting words in my mouth. We're talking about city downtowns not the whole US. I'm for restricting car use there, which you claim is authoritarian. I proposed an alternative, one used in the Netherlands, to put the onus of harm on the less vulnerable party and balance unfair externalities. You complain that this is "guilty-until-proven-innocent". If you want to rules lawyer your way to a car hegemony be my guest, but I'll continue to advocate for decreasing the unbalanced harms to non-car drivers on American streets.

> > You're advocating for a guilty-until-proven-innocent system?

> Come on, stop putting words in my mouth.

Here's what you previously said:

> any accident with a cyclist or a pedestrian results in immediate license seizure

> and get it back after police/judge agrees that it isn't your fault

Are you saying you don't consider that to be a guilty-until-proven-innocent system?

The thing I noticed is you seem to be associating the seizure of the license as some form of guilt, where as sat least to be it seems like the equivalent of a “but don’t leave town” warning from the cops. You’re not guilty but you are under investigation to determine if you are guilty, so they politely ask you to not run away in case they have any more questions that could help prove you innocent (I’m obviously putting aside the fact that reality doesn’t work this way anymore for loads of reasons when it comes to the police). The same goes for your license, you are involved in an incident where you being an irresponsible driver is one possible result, preventing you doing further irresponsible driving is justified prior to the conclusion of the investigation and has nothing to do with innocent or guilty.

> you seem to be associating the seizure of the license as some form of guilt

That's because not being allowed to drive is a really harsh punishment. Harshly punishing innocent people is even worse, which is why I assumed you meant guilty-until-proven-innocent.

> it seems like the equivalent of a “but don’t leave town” warning

Not being allowed to drive doesn't keep you from leaving town, but it does severely reduce your ability to participate in society. Now you can't go to work, drop your kids off at day care, or bring home groceries.

> preventing you doing further irresponsible driving is justified prior to the conclusion of the investigation

That's exactly what guilty-until-proven-innocent is!

If you’re going to associate removing the ability to drive with a punishment, then naturally your going to have the viewpoint that you’ve been judged as guilty. However driving is a privilege not a right, you’re not entitled to it, if having it temporarily withheld is earth shattering, then perhaps that’s indicative of issues beyond the importance of driving to the individual and represents how dangerously dependent on cars society has become.

We can’t expect the status quo to change without some way to force it off the car dependent pedestal it’s perched on. Lawfare might be the best way. If it inconveniences people they might drive different or stop driving so much and then eventually we get urban change.

Single occupancy vehicles take away my choice to bike safely in downtown Manhattan because most of the available space is dedicated to oversized cars.

What do you mean by "dedicated to"? Are there streets in downtown Manhattan where cars are allowed but bikes aren't?

You're also (in some cases) allowed to swim in the same rivers as alligators do. Yet that's not a good idea since the alligators make swimming there pretty dangerous. Same goes for riding a bicycle on roads full of reckless car drivers.

this is a good point. push away the poor infrastructure design, and subsidies. The cars will go!