It's a perfect analogy, because we pointlessly reshaped our world around automobiles before realizing that no, in fact, most of us didn't need one, and we would have been better off had we not created a society in which everyone has to have one in order to exist.

There was a lot of horse shit everywhere before cars.

You could go back to bicycles but that's not great when you have a family of groceries and kitty litter to carry home in the rain.

Or when need a trip to the hospital or any other emergency.

So yes, many people need a car, and it enables personal freedom.

I live in a small town you can walk end to end in 15 minutes, it has everything you need in a small area, but a car still makes life easier and more fun.

How do you propose we structure society where you don't need cars?

Not having cars doesn't mean not having motorized transport, it just means restructuring our priorities around much more efficient forms of mass transportation, ranging from increased walkability and cycling infrastructure on a local scale, to buses, trams and trains on a larger scale, with specialised vehicles like ambulances and cargo-taxis for those rare cases where you really do need a whole motorized vehicle to yourself.

So what does society look like where you can still have ambulances and taxis but not a car for yourself?

Don't you still need roads for those? So just normal civilians can't have them?

And I won't hold my breath for local politicians to improve public transportation.

I'd love better public transportation, in addition to cars.

-- I hit some sort of post limit, replying to below --

Civilians are still allowed to have and drive their own cars, even in Europe.

I'm all for better designed cities in America though, but it's not a car problem, and especially not a universal issue (towns are perfect).

Instead of hating on cars I think a more useful approach would be to contact your local politicians that are in charge of zoning and public transportation.

This is exactly how a lot of European cities are structured.

There's a lot of car shit everywhere in the atmosphere, and it's causing the climate to change, so it's arguably not much better.

Horses release methane. The scale of horses you would need would certainly be worse. It was a problem in the past at a much smaller scale. Plus with shit you have disease and rats, which means more disease.

> You could go back to bicycles but that's not great when you have a family of groceries and kitty litter to carry home in the rain.

You’ve clearly never been to the Netherlands.

I have, and there are bicycles littered everywhere and huge amounts of traffic on them.

And no it doesn't solve the problems I listed. Those things are still difficult.

If I'm feeling sick I guess my wife can hook a wagon to the bike and pull me.

Don't get me wrong I bike around town all the time, but some days are really hot, some are really rainy, some days I need to carry more stuff than is possible on a bike, some days I'm not feeling well enough to bike.

> it doesn't solve the problems I listed. Those things are still difficult.

No they’re not. These things are very popular here, especially among parents: https://urbanarrow.com/family-bikes/family/

You can fit a ton of groceries in one of those, transport kids, etc.

Bikes are way more convenient for day to day use than cars.

And when you're too sick or old to pedal?

My grandmother can still go shopping in a car, but assuming she did have the stamina to bike groceries, if she fell she would not recover.

> And when you're too sick or old to pedal?

The elderly cycle all the time, especially since e-bikes went mainstream. Most elderly stop driving much earlier than they stop cycling.

> assuming she did have the stamina to bike groceries,

E-bikes are a thing.

> if she fell she would not recover.

People who have difficulty with balance, either due to age or medical issues use (e-)trikes, for some examples: https://senzup.nl/driewielfiets/nieuw/

There are very few people for who cycling is not possible; there are so many options to make it accessible for almost everyone. Here is an example for people in a wheelchair: https://www.roam.nl/runner-handbike-20/a3535 , it basically hooks up to their existing wheelchair and turns it into a hand-operated tricycle.

I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make. Because you can make up some edge case for whom cycling is not feasible the 99.999% for which it is shouldn’t either?

No, people are able to drive long after they can bike.

The only thing that basically stops you from being able to drive is your vision, which will impact biking as well.

Handicap and elderly people are not edge cases.

We adapt our society to fit the disabled everywhere, as we should.

My point is we should take this into account when designing cities.

Bikes do not work for many, many people and situations. It's not an edge case problem, it's a fundamental problem.

> No, people are able to drive long after they can bike.

Like hell they are.

> The only thing that basically stops you from being able to drive is your vision, which will impact biking as well.

Looking at some studies, vision is not a major factor in accidents caused by the elderly. The reasons are mainly mental: reduced reaction speed, reduced ability to quickly grasp complex situations in traffic. Physical reasons are mostly around reduced motor functions: reduced muscle strength and fine motor skills.

Biking is impacted a lot less by these cognitive changes since you don’t go 130 km/h on a bike. Elderly are more likely to get hurt in a cycling accident, as they are more frail, but they are less likely to cause an accident.

> Handicap and elderly people are not edge cases.

Are you saying the majority of people are either elderly or handicapped ?

> We adapt our society to fit the disabled everywhere, as we should.

And we do. There are many options for both the elderly and disabled people to cycle, as I have shown in my earlier posts. None of those are exceptional, I regularly encounter those ‘in the wild’.

> Bikes do not work for many, many people and situations. It's not an edge case problem, it's a fundamental problem.

Cars do not work for many, many people and situations. Lots of places are simply not reachable by car. What do you think is easier for an elderly person: driving their bike right up to a store and walking 5 meters or driving their car to the edge of the city center and then having to walk a kilometer or more to get to the store they need to go to?

Bikes, (non humiliating) public transport, and more compact city design all have to work together.

I think cars in small towns are pretty sweet - but they suck for everyone in big cities. They take up huge amounts of space during rush hour, and move very few people compared to any form of transit you like

I don't disagree with that. And it's one of the biggest reasons I don't live in a city.

It's a local government issue that your public transportation and public zoning sucks.

Cars aren't the problem (as you pointed out, they are sweet in towns).

It's your local politicians and it's a scaling problem.

Hard disagree. I love the freedom of going anywhere I want in the country on a whim. I love suburban and rural living that would be very hard without extensive roads. I could go on and on about the benefits of cars over public transit.

The question was about “really need”, not “love”. I’d love a lot of things I don’t really need.

Well all we really need is a meal or two a day and a tent. Need becomes subjective very quickly.

Of course you're imagining the world we have now with all the cars simply removed, instead of one that had developed without cars in the first place. A lot of competing infrastructure was deleted, or never made in the first place, because of cars.

Really? This is more like does anyone really need a car that goes 1000 mph

I mean, if it has zero safety concerns and it's possible to actually go 1000 MPH on the freeway, then sign me up! Who wouldn't want to get there faster if there were no downsides?

But there are safety concerns, and it's not possible to go 1000km/h on the highway. So there's not much point in having a 1000km/h car, because you will never use its full potential. Just like a 1khz display (supposedly).

The analogy is strained and no longer applicable. Sure, you won't be running Cyberpunk 2077 at 1 kHz, but you'll use a 1 kHz display to its full potential of imperceptible latency and eliminated motion blur in regular desktop use, with every movement of your mouse and scroll of its wheel.

Even in gaming, less demanding games can hit 1000 Hz and console emulators will benefit from reduced latency too; you could actually beat CRT latency.

Well, maybe I'm biased - I've tested a 120Hz monitor recently and I legitimately didn't see a huge difference between 60Hz. Maybe in mouse trails when I was intentionally looking for the difference. I can't imagine how insignificant the change to 1Khz would be for me. But I'm not a gamer and I've spent my whole life on screens like this, so maybe I'm just blind and other people are much more sensitive to this - in this case I agree my analogy doesn't make sense.

The cost I guess

Sure, but the cost only applies to people who want the feature, so it's fine, right? I'll buy the 1 kHz monitor and you can buy the 60 Hz one.

That's an obvious downside, though one usually easiest to figure out with economies of scale.

OTOH, it's freaking hard to figure out safety at even 100km/h.

Driving a car isn't a good analogy because if we were driving a car remotely from a system with only 100hz refresh rate we'd definitely notice the difference even if only driving at 100 mph.