An I say "reasonable" intentionally vague because there are degrees of car dependency that varies between regions. On average, I believe Europe might be closer to banning private cars. USA I would bet not so much.
It's a bit dishonest to argue for continued car dominance just because it's already status quo.
You: it's not the world we live in right now
Which is a useless retort.
And work the first 25 days out of each month month to pay for it, LOL.
As for stores, suburbanites will still go to the a cheaper, larger store with more selection. That's usually in the same suburb, but still a good drive.
If better options were available, people would choose those. When we don't make better options because people are stuck in a local optima of car culture, there is no change. My point was what I wrote: you can't make a comparison with less cars as if everything else in society would have remained equal. Of course there would be secondary effects to handle the fact that people would have to live and travel differently.
You don't get to call people "dishonest", tell them to "f off", call them "shitty", then get pious and offended when someone takes exception to that.
> We do better here on HN, as a long term member I'm disappointed in your behavior.
You've been here since 2013. I've been using this account since 2010 so you can "f off" with that, too.
> If better options were available, people would choose those.
"Better" according to who? You?
If people can't get food, they start eating rats and shoe leather. It doesn't make it "better".
The point was that I expected better from _you_, a long standing member here. But your response again shows I need to adjust that expectation.
Exhaust. Oil. Tire wear microplastics.
Worse perhaps are all types of proximity sensors, because you can only trust them when they go off, and even then not always. Most cars get dirt on them, snow on them, rain on them and that tends to mess with proximity sensing enough to either disable the sensors or cause them to go off randomly. I don't think anyone has ever yet trusted the blind spot sensors on their mirrors to do a lane change, only aborted one because of them. Such non-camera sensors would fix almost nothing because at best they would sometimes cause people to reconsider swerving into a motorcyclist, and even then they usually go off way too late to prevent misfires while driving normally.
These are great features when they work but overengineering around fundamental design problems seems to me to only put people too much at ease in their cars and make bad driver behaviour worse, because why spin your head around to check when you can just not do that and stare at the little screen or trust your array of easily fooled sensors to do safety in your place. I think solutions like finding alternative pillar configurations, creating long or short enough front side windows for you to see back, harsher driver's license testing with longer required study periods and in cases where you can't do anything else such as some pickups just doing what semis do and having several well-aligned mirrors instead of one set of nice-looking ones would be a lot safer in the end.
As well as getting people who can't drive for shit off the road. That's sort of included in driver's license requirements but there's surely some other methods for it that I have not mentioned.
It's anecdotal I know, but as someone who commutes on a bike, the number of times I almost crash by myself per journey is near zero, yet the number of times a car tries to inadvertently occupy the same piece of road as me is multiple.
Here is some data from USA, I've not read it.
"What is safe" obviously depends on who else are on the road.
I only got my license a few years ago, public transport works quite well here in Norway, seems I haven't yet learned all the sneaky ways bike riders can surprise ya.
That said, I see idiots behind the wheel causing near crashes several times a week so yeah I guess as a rider those scare you a lot more.
Riding through red lights without stopping or yielding to traffic turning right, riding on sidewalks forcing pedestrians out of their way, zipping back and forth between the sidewalk and road, changing lanes without signaling and assuming the cars will read their minds and slow down for them are all things I saw in my few years living in a bigger city with lots of bicyclists.
Never got into an accident with one, but I was a passenger in a car that nearly hit one. She either had psychological problems, or was intentionally trying to get an insurance payout, because she absolutely tried to get hit, then freaked out on the driver when he managed to slow down in time.
I like riding motorcycles, but I don't fool myself into thinking that they're anywhere near as safe as a modern car.
In fact, they are responsible for more than 28 times the fatalities per mile traveled than cars.
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...