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Comment by dundercoder | Hacker News Reader

I’m 36, live in the suburbs, and in recent years have gone (legally) blind from Retinitis Pigmentosa. Voluntarily giving up my license was one of the hardest and most important decisions I’ve made. There is literally 0 public transportation here. Not even Uber or Lyft have come around.

America’s sprawl and dependence on cars is incredible. It wasn’t until I spent time in London, Oxford, and Paris that I could recognize how much everything here is built around the idea of owning a car.

So now my wife has to give rides to our four kids, AND me, and there’s literally nothing I can do about it except petition for better transit, and pray self-driving cars get here faster.

Being dependent on rides feels like being 15 again. It’s humiliating being picked up from a job interview in a parking lot with 200+ cars.

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Out of curiosity, why give up your license? It's a great ID. You don't have to use it. I know plenty of people with licenses to carry concealed, but don't.

To you point about car dependence, not using one is humiliating, at least for me. I live about .25 miles from my office. I walk daily to and from (twice). I feel, and have seen, people look at me like I'm poor. It is a foreign concept to many that walking or biking might be better (especially in Florida where on those rare 30 degrees nights, me, a Hoosier, is right at home, but right now it's a balmy 68).

I, and several of my friends when I used to live in Phoenix, were big walkers. Its evening? go for a walk around the neighborhood. Walk to work, even though it was like 1.5 miles...just...walk.

Each of us were stopped at least once by police for being suspicious...near as I can tell (we were all >middle class white people) all that was suspicious was us walking on sidewalks. Outside of the biggest cities America is actively antagonistic towards walkers. My sincere belief is because of the assumption that they are poor and should be judged.

Even in big cities American urban design tends to strongly favor cars and ignore pedestrians. Here in Germany, any decent sized intersection will have pedestrian islands, often multiple islands just for a single side. In the states, these are relatively uncommon.

Or look at where the stoplights are. In Germany, they're set back such that it's impossible for a driver to go into the crosswalk and still see the light. This naturally encourages drivers to respect the crosswalk. Not so in the US, unfortunately.

I could go on and on, but really almost all American streets are hostile to anything that's not a car.

Where you say "all", you are talking about roads and major streets.

The typical American street has a sidewalk set back from the street and light traffic (so the controls at the intersections barely matter).

If you're talking about local, non-arterial roads, those are much worse for pedestrians in the US too.

1. At least here in Munich, most of them here have enough space for one lane of parked cars, and one comfortable lane of traffic; if cars happen to approach each other on such a street, one has to pull out somewhere, or sometimes they can barely squeeze by each other. Contrast that with the US, where room enough for two lanes of parked cars and for two lanes of traffic (albeit without any markings) are the standard.

2. Setbacks here, both for businesses and homes, are much smaller than in the US.

3. There are many "cut-throughs" and little paths that are only permeable to pedestrians and cyclists, not cars.

The practical impact of the above is that streets here feel more human scale, cars travel more slowly, and walking and biking are more convenient. I let my six-year old son bike on the road on local streets here to get to the bakery or train station, something I'd never do in the bay area, where I'm originally from.

They may not be as nice as in Germany but they are not typically hostile either.

The streets in town here are ~20-25 feet wide and mostly don't have much traffic. 3 or 4 extra steps to cross an empty street isn't a big problem.

They are. You've just accustomed yourself to the hostility.

Germany isn't even top-tier for active transportation; that title goes to the Netherlands. And even in the Netherlands, more money goes to cars than biking or walking, usually.

You can tell yourself all you want that walking is treated okay in the states, but budgets tell the real story of where priorities lie.

Disagree with the antagonism, though my sample is of course very small.

Coming from North Europe, where it's fairly natural to walk distances of a few hundred meters to do an errand, I and colleagues used to walk from a hotel in Rohnert Park to a Wal-mart on the other side of highway 101, whenever visiting the place and needing to do some shopping.

And each time there were people driving by who would stop at us and ask: "Do you guys need help, did your car break down?"

Very friendly people, apparently they thought we had a problem.

I should clarify that by antagonism I don't mean individual negativity or dislike for...

I mean conscious lack of interest at a design level in engaging those populations. The situation you describe, to me, is a manifestation of that cultural antagonism. That situation exists because society is squeezing out people who walk.

That's a different situation, you will also get questioning looks in Sweden when walking in the urban sprawl of upper middle class, but it's worse in the US. The OSM Surveyors Jacket came about in part because of a necessity, so it's really not only a US thing.

Really? I have walked in some Swedish upper middle class / sprawl areas, didn't notice any particular questioning looks, not to mention antagonism. Har inte gått i faktisk Solsidan dock.

The only area in Scandinavia where I met actual antagonism for walking was a neighbourhood in Århus; I lead a group of 12-year-old football players in a neat dual line through it by foot, and some "youth" started to throw little rocks at the boys. I guess they wanted to signal that it's their territory.

The feeling can absolutely be found here too if you are unlucky. Calling it antagonistic would be hyperbolic of me.

This is very telling

even though it was like 1.5 miles...

It should be the other way round "People drive to stuff, even though it's only 1.5 miles".

But 1.5 miles in Phoenix is not necessarily as 1.5 miles elsewhere. The sun is oppressive and actively trying to kill you there.

I can also imagine walking through 1.5 miles of Phoenix sprawl is dreadfully boring, compared to somewhere like San Francisco or Berkeley.

Doesn't help that drivers act incredibly entitled to the road and view pedestrians and bicycles as obstacles.

Otoh, drivets are also the ones taking the traffic regulations most seriously. Pedestrians are inclined to jaywalk, and that’s pretty much it, but don’t get me started on bicycles…

Your comment is anecdata, basing these kinds of statements on personal experiences is not a good idea, the truth is we break the rules with the same frequency what ever mode of transport the use. Furthermore in the statistics for accidents in Sweden serious injuries drivers vs. pedestrian/bicyclist you can see that in ~80% of the cases it was caused by drivers.

There’s no good data because there is no statistically valid enforcement of rules of the road in bikes.

In part because the rules are designed for cars, I’ve always observed cyclists, including myself, breaking common sense rules at much higher rates than cars. Blowing red lights, riding on sidewalks, failure to signal, riding, etc.

Bikes are slower so you would expect them to cause even fewer accidents. 20% may not seem like it, but it suggests bikes riders are much worse at following the rules of the road than drivers.

In practice you actually see this with bike riders regularly ignoring red lights ect.

Cyclist here. A lot if drivers will be rude (or worse) to me on the road because of the sort of things you said. Based on most objective studies I've seen there is no real difference in the fraction of cyclists and drivers who regularly break the law. They break different laws, but I'd say drivers break the law in much more dangerous ways (e.g., speeding). Cyclists running red lights is a problem, but I can only think of a handful of times in my decade of cycling when a cyclist didn't check for oncoming traffic before going through a red light. In contrast I can think of more times off the top of my head when drivers blew through red lights without looking (most were obviously distracted), but that's to be expected as there are many more drivers than cyclists. Anyway, it seems to me that the fraction of drivers who are bad is about the same as that for cyclists, so someone's mode of transportation is not informative about whether someone's law abiding. Saying otherwise is not justified.

You can find a lot about these studies via Google, e.g.: https://www.google.com/search?q=comparison+of+cyclists+and+d...

By the way, I follow the law to the letter. Doesn't get me any more respect on the road, unfortunately.

Minor tranffic violoations are rarely an issue it's the big ones like: I can only think of a handful of times in my decade of cycling when a cyclist didn't check for oncoming traffic before going through a red light. which tend to kill people.

Minor speeding (~15%) is not a significant hazard. Going through a red light is about as dangerous as doing ~50-100MPH over the speed limit which is very rare.

Other things like riding on lane markers between cars is blatantly ignoring the rules of the road and vastly increase the risk of death. Again about as risky as a car slowly driving on the sidewalk, which you just don't see.

Bike riders on sidewalks are again extremely dangerous and often lead to fatalities, but it's also very common.

PS: I worked with bike messengers who may be unusually bad about this stuff.

Well, my experience differs a lot, and I suspect I've seen at least an order of magnitude more cyclists than you have. I think it's a combination of selective attention and your experience with bike messengers that's potentially the problem. Bike messengers seem to be particularly impatient and more likely to violate the law to shave off a few seconds. Also could be the location. Of the cities I've spent non-negligible time in, I found cyclists in Baltimore to be considerably worse than cyclists in Austin or DC.

To address another point, even the "minor" speeding you mention is a significant hazard. 15% over the speed limit is 32% more kinetic energy. Combine that with the fact that speeding really does not save much time in most situations, I think it's a clear loser in a cost-benefit analysis. Perhaps on an empty highway it's okay. But a driver's time to destination in most cases is more limited by stop lights and traffic, and believe me, I know. As a cyclist who doesn't go faster than 25 mph it's really irritating to have a driver pass me dangerously, only to sit behind them at the next light for 2 minutes, or for me to pass them because they are waiting to turn. I have no detailed statistics for this, but it happens so frequently that I don't think speeding is likely to save much time. It mostly provides psychological relief for impatient drivers. (Your opinion, of course, may differ.)

> Other things like riding on lane markers between cars is blatantly ignoring the rules of the road and vastly increase the risk of death.

I don't "lane split" or "filter" as it's called, but it's worth noting that this is frequently legal (perhaps not in your jurisdiction) and it has its proponents, many of which tout it's apparent safety benefits. I don't think the data is clear about whether it's safe or dangerous on net. I personally don't think it offers any advantages, so it's not worth the potential risk. Also, many drivers encourage cyclists to do that to get out of their way. You should see how infuriated some drivers get when I take the lane at an intersection rather than filter through to the front. I've talked to cyclists who run red lights, and I frequently have heard that they just want to get away from angry drivers, and running the light allows them to do that. (I don't think this is the right approach.) The same applies to sidewalk riding, which is fairly clearly more dangerous, yet riding legally is often discouraged by drivers, sometimes violently.

In terms of speeding stop lights are a floor function. Make the cut and save 2 minutes fail and lose 2 minutes. You only see cases where they lose that bet, but it's just a numbers game.

As to speeding, we have actual data on this stuff. So it's easy to demonstrate the risks are very low directly from accident rates vs # of speeders. The risk of early death vs time saved actually favors doing 5MPH over the speed limit on highways.

As to personal experience I only have ~45,000 cyclists which may be high or low. But it feels like a very large number.

PS: People try any justify their behavior, but statistically bike riders regularly risk death.

> People try any justify their behavior, but statistically bike riders regularly risk death.

The story about the dangerous jaywalker and bicyclists is a big falsehood if you look at the data. As I said; cyclists have the same behaviour than others have in traffic. The truth is that cyclists live longer, even with all the risky behaviour you think cylists are prone to.

The thing that is risky is spending ones life in a car, on so many levels. You refrase things so it seems like cyclists are to blame for being killed by cars when we know that is actually not the case. Just because the party line today is that jaywalkers and cyclists are worse than others doesn't mean there is any actualy evidence for it.

Their are a lot of very biased statistics reported around bike related deaths.

Even with a lot of bike infrastructure, and a biking culture Denmark sees 17% of traffic related deaths by cyclists which is vastly more than their share of miles traveled.

Their are augments around health benefits. But, these fail to show up in the data as Denmark has ranks #17 in Europe significantly behind even United Kingdom with it's well known obesity problem. https://www.reinisfischer.com/life-expectancy-european-union...

PS: You need or look at all related risks combined not just select a few. One risk rarely considered, is heavy exercise in traffic is very bad for the lungs.

> One risk rarely considered, is heavy exercise in traffic is very bad for the lungs.

While I agree air pollution is worth considering, "very bad" sounds like hyperbole to me. Definitely not anywhere near smoking. The solutions also are rather simple: change your route to avoid heavy traffic and/or wear an air filter. I've done both before and recommend the latter more, as it seems more effective, does not make breathing harder, and has other safety benefits as well. Also consider the length of one's commute.

It's also worth noting that air pollution can easily be worse when driving. In fact, while I can not find the link now, I recall one non-scientific article with some experiments run by academics suggested that net exposure to air pollution was higher when driving in some cases.

Look at the occupational risks for people working as toll collectors. Toll collectors now have positive-pressure HVAC systems due to long term health risks. https://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/investigations/toll_...

Exercise increases the amount of lung exposure to particulate matter per unit time.

> You need or look at all related risks

You are right that traffic pollution is very bad for the lungs, it's actually the cause of 30%-60% of all deaths related to lung diseases, but this is true for everyone not just cyclists. It's the same number of deaths as for sucides but with an inverse demographics graph of course, at least in Sweden. Those numbers are staggering and the solution to that is not to stop bicyclists navigating normal commute traffic.

I would like to say that I do look at the combined risks: There are atleast two longitudinal studies on Dutch and Danish bicyclists that show that using bicycling as an active mode of transport means longer life, basically it's an integration test were you get X% increase in a population by just commuting daily.

Here is some commedy that is obvisouly just Norwegians and Swedes being jealous, but it gives you some view on how we think of Danes, and what might affect their lives a bit more than bicycling, as with your link they are very interesting but irrelevant since they do not affect the same population groups.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJBtV_S8c1c

> this is true for everyone not just cyclists

Exercise increases the amount of lung exposure to particulate matter per unit time. Biking is also a slower mode of transit which increases risks, further cars have built in air filters which further reduce risks.

So it's really not equivalent. On the upside, bike paths need not be next to traffic and in those cases may reduce exposure.

I do not disagree with the dangers of air pollution it's just that if you look at large populations of bicyclists there are no significant elevation of risk compared to other populations in this regard.

The solution is not to scare people with baseless arguments.

I hope you don't take this the wrong way. My goal is to convince drivers that cyclists are not as bad as they think they are and that they should drive safer.

> You only see cases where they lose that bet, but it's just a numbers game.

I don't follow. Seeing both is pretty easy; they drive away. What I question is that the 2 minutes that one saves at most (likely closer to 15 seconds or so on average) is worth the extra risk to other road users. The asymmetry is the problem. You say cyclists regularly risk death, and sure, they do, though the risk is probably lower than you suspect, and drivers risk death too. A large fraction of cyclist deaths occur late at night with a drunk cyclist; remove those factors and your risk is a lot lower. For someone like me who goes out of my way to ride safely, my main (perhaps only) risk on the road is bad drivers, who are by large tolerated or encouraged by western society.

> As to speeding, we have actual data on this stuff. So it's easy to demonstrate the risks are very low directly from accident rates vs # of speeders.

The NTSB says speeding contributes to about 10,000 fatalities per year in the US:

https://www.ntsb.gov/news/events/Pages/2017-DCA15SS002.aspx

Doesn't sound low to me. Maybe it seems low when you compare against how frequently people speed, but that's a red herring as far as I'm concerned. It's unlikely you'll die while smoking any particular cigarette, but clearly the net effects of smoking at significant. I focus on the net effects. I don't think the time the speeders save justifies the life lost, even neglecting those disabled, etc. As I said, I think speeding provides mostly psychological benefit.

> As to personal data I only have ~45,000 cyclists which may be high or low. But it feels like a very large number.

You have seen about 45,000 individual cyclists on the road? I find that hard to believe. That's comparable to the total number of transportation cyclists in Austin. For comparison, I suspect I've seen at least several thousand individual cyclists on the road. If I see only two new cyclists on the road per day I'll see about 7000 after 10 years. Seems reasonable to me.

> A large fraction of cyclist deaths occur late at night with a drunk cyclist

In single accident deaths at night with only a cyclist this is actually the most common case (70%-90%). In deadly accidents between car and bicycle it's not very common for the cyclist to be drunk about the same as always.

Pedestrians and cyclists generally don't present a serious safety hazard to others.

This is like complaining that people treat guns and knives with different levels of seriousness. Of course they do; both are potentially deadly, but one far more so than the other.

> cyclists generally don't present a serious safety hazard to others.

If they behave dangerously and put themselves at risk of being hit, even if they are the one taking the risk, the car driver will always be at fault, no matter what. And yes, like some others have echoed in comments here, many bike riders do not stop at red lights. I see that every - single - day, multiple times.

First off, you're wrong. Cyclists can absolutely be found at fault.

Secondly, cyclist scofflaw-ness is mostly a result of a transportation system that's hostile to them. The Dutch aren't nicer cyclists because they're born that way, superior to Americans; they're nicer cyclists because the system there largely respects people on bikes, and so the system receives respect in return.

Go to any city with widespread segregated bike lanes and bike lights, and you'll likely find a culture where cyclists are no more likely to break the law than pedestrians or motorists.

Third, motorists are hardly exempt from constant law-breaking. How often do people not signal, or roll through stop signs, or enter the intersection right after the light turns red, or park in a bike lane, or 'block the box', or tailgate, or break the speed limit? I've lived in enough places in the US to know that the answer is "constantly". And all that with a vehicle that's vastly more dangerous than any bike or jogger.

I mean, my god, one of the most common and stereotypical complaints in America about where anyone lives is "ugh, drivers in [state] are the WORST".

My experience is generally that it's safer to cross the street away from crosswalks. Typically, crosswalks are put in places that have subpar visibility in one or both directions, or at intersections where there are many more variables in play and potential decisions that multiple parties can make. Drivers will do unpredictable things if you are on foot and merely in the general area of a crosswalk.

If you cross the street on a straight-away with good visibility, you can gauge the speed of the traffic, determine a safe window, and cross easily, without disruption.

This. Drivers, pedestrians and bikers hating each other is a result of infrastructure that results in them having to interact in poorly defined ways.

Maybe that was a Phoenix thing- I've walked in areas of all sizes (From gravel farm roads to some of the countries biggest cities) all over the country and never had the problem.

I can back this up. I'm British, my father and I were in the US and went to visit my uncle. We took the train out of Boston and decided to walk from the station to his house. Got stopped by the police and questioned. Amazing.

Pragmatism aside, surrendering my license was a significant step in the grieving process for me. I was warned by a vision counselor that losing sight would be like losing a loved one. So far that has been my experience.

> It's a great ID.

A few years ago i started telling people "I don't have any ID" and, remarkably, they all found ways to do business with me.

As it happens I do have a driver's license but I leave it in the car. 99% of the time I am walking around with no ID at all, and my life works fine. You can fly without ID.

I do carry a passport when flying internationally.

I walk pretty much everywhere within a two mile range if I have the time. It's a bit meditative and I can also get a little exercise (if you could call it that) in.

According to WaPo, 70% of Americans are overweight or obese, so I don't think that, statistically, many people are really in a place to look down on you for walking.

I think the law requires you to give it up if you can't see well enough to drive. You can get an I'd card that looks a lot like a license, but doesn't permit you to operate motor vehicles on public roads.

Have you considered moving to a region with better transportation support?

I have. I’d have to move out of state and into a fairly urban city to get decent transit. The schools here are fantastic and I love just about everything here, except the lack of transit.

We may get to that point, but for right now I work remotely (platform engineering) and just grin and bear the rest.

If you get to the point of considering moving, you may wish to look into a college town. They'll typically have far more extensive transit than the average mid-sized city/town does.

That is a good point.

Thank you dundercoder for sharing your experiences, would be very interested in the adaptations you made to your working environment as your eyesight failed. It also got me thinking about my own locale, and I would agree with volkl48. I live in Walla Walla, WA now, which has three colleges and a very walkable downtown. Sounds like you have kids, and we have reasonable public schools. It's a 45 minute flight to Seattle. There is a public bus system that covers much of the area; surprising for a US city of only 30,000 people. Really though you can cover the entire downtown area on foot. Sounds like as a suburbanite it might be more your speed over a metro area.

I still have some central vision, maybe 20 degrees field of view, so I can still see my laptop screen ok. I had to ditch my two 27” monitors because I’d get vertigo looking between them (usually hunting for the mouse pointer)

I crank up the text size so large my neighbors can read it, but not so big that it exceeds my visual field.

I use a screen reader to read docs. I’m super excited about the new AI powered narrators because listening to ANY of the older style readers for 30 seconds or more causes permanent rage conditions.

I tried Braille, but it’s like trying to be instantly productive using vim, in Chinese, while on the space shuttle during launch. I might return to it sometime because narrated code is horrible to listen to.

Try cranking the speed up on the synthesized speech. There are blind listeners that listen to synthesized speech at much higher rates, 600-800 wpm and up. If you crank up the speed a bit, it would probably help differentiate between normal speech where you have greater expectations on how it should sound, and something that's almost a different language.

I really recommend Braille, even if you are not blind. You might be underestimating the time it takes to learn though Chinese is easy.

Regarding the new AI powered narrators, do you have any recommendations already?

On public transit, wouldn't you be unusually vulnerable to crime? Why would you want a service that isn't safe for you?

What an American comment to make. Public transit works in many cities perfectly well and you can use it without fearing for your life, or your wallet. Children in elementary school take public transit unattended.

I live in San Francisco. I don't take public transit regularly but I've lived in this area for 17 years and have personally witnessed several incidents on BART, Caltrain, and Muni. I also lived near Koln Germany for four years where I took public transit hundreds of times without issue. I think it's fair to say that some places have public transit that is just safer than others.

I'm pretty sure public transit is safer when it's not viewed as something that's only for the poor who can't afford to drive.

When everyone uses it, then the share of regular people who just want to go somewhere instead of harassing others gets up. But if only marginal people take public transit, then of course you'll mostly encounter marginal people there. The problem is how to start making everyone take it again.

Yeah, that sounds really weird to me, in france I went to school alone starting at 7 years old (although it was on foot and really close by), then using public transportation at 10, and I was never in danger.

As a note, in Atlanta, both private and public middle school children take marta often.

Well, I'm an American. I might feel differently if I were Japanese.

Here, children are driven to school by their parents. When school ends, the parents are there waiting in their cars. Kids mostly don't even play outside anymore.

Those of you thinking public transport is fine are likely at least a little bit physically imposing and/or you are in relatively fancy locations.

What a strange land. In the UK, I was using public transport and cycling to school by myself from the age of 16. I'm curious, are there large cities in the USA where this can happen? Are there any significant moves by politicians to wean North Americans off cars?

Conversely, are there large cities in other countries that are similar to the US, where this does not happen? I'm going to suspect the Middle East, due to ubiquitous air-conditioning.

16 is a bit old? I was 13. Many other children were 11. This was a city in the Midlands.

When I moved to London for university, there were 5-6 year olds on buses and trains, accompanied by an older sibling. And they were the rich children attending the private school I lived close to, normal children that age would live close enough to walk to their local school.

> I'm curious, are there large cities in the USA where this can happen?

Yes, GP appears to be ill-informed about how kids get to school in large parts of the US. In NYC, students take public transit (and are provided passes, if necessary) from approx 13 years old. The same concept applies in most cities I know of on the East Coast (I can't speak for further west, though it appears Chicago has a similar system).

It's because our news is completely unregulated and local news always spotlights and aggrandizes crimes and whatnot, so that the population is terrified of itself constantly.

Obviously if people took the time to look at the crime statistics, the chances of being a victim of a crime is less than half of what it was when I walked a mile to elementary school every day.

For the oddball crimes, that is true. Kids aren't actually getting swiped off the streets.

For more normal crimes, the lifetime chance of being a crime victim is serious. For stranger-on-stranger violent crime, there is a total lifetime probability of about 5.3%.

You might think "oh that is just 5.3% so no big deal", but the chance of dying in a fire is only 0.09% and we still bother with smoke detectors.

Violent crime is a life-altering event. Given the potential for horrific consequences, it is reasonable to be concerned about the possibility. Transportation choices change that risk.

I've been victim of violent crime. Somebody hit me in the face for no reason at all and ran away. While that sucks pretty bad, dying in a fire, or even just losing all my stuff in the fire, is incomparably worse. Being a victim of violent crime doesn't mean that you land in the hospital. Violent crime has a pretty broad definition.

I grew up in the suburbs and was walking to the bus stop by 8, and taking public transit to places by 15. It wasn't especially unsafe, although it would leave you stranded places after 6 in the afternoon.

High school kids usually use normal CTA buses here in Chicago

> Here, children are driven to school by their parents. When school ends, the parents are there waiting in their cars.

Do parents get out of their work in the middle of the afternoon to drive their kids from school to home? Do they go back to work for the last couple hours after that? Or do kids have 8-hour schooldays?

Luckily my wife only works a few hours a week, so she was able to pick up our kids from school (before we opted for homeschooling). For my brother and his wife, they both work full-time. They can get some help from Grandma, some help from friends who have a stay at home mom, and some help from us. On days where none of that lines up, either he or his wife have to leave work, take kids home, and usually go back to the office. There is no public transportation available here and they removed school buses maybe 10 years ago as a cost cutting measure. When I was a kid, the school bus worked fantastic. It is crazy they don't run them anymore.

I'm sure it varies by family.

Some people have fully flexible time. Some people have a part-time job or two, so they simply don't agree to work shifts during the times they need to drive the kids around. Some people don't work, often because a single income is supporting a two-parent household.

Or they don't work, because the parent is expected to wait for the child in car, although the child is big enough to transport itself had there been reasonable public transport.

It's called housewives, a concept abandoned by most of the modern world.

And for good reasons.

Good reasons such as? I think the rise of the dual income household is a major contributor to many problems. This is not to say that woman in the workplace is bad, I think a diverse workforce is a good thing. But the dual income family has lessened parent-child interaction and raised the average household income which I think raises general prices for just about everything, but especially housing. This makes it harder to get by as a single parent (which tends to affect woman more than men). And the increased cost of housing is a major problem and contributor to poverty and all the issues that brings.

It might have been better if the addition of woman to the workplace included an equal shift of men to a househusband role.

PS I like your username.

I am women. It would have to be me who would have to stay.

And I did stayed some time while the kids were small and disliked that a lot. You get used to depression as a normal state, basically.

And people wonder why the environment is screwed up...

> Here, children are driven to school by their parents.

Weird, here in New York I see kids riding the subway to school every day. I must be imagining them.

On the footpath, wouldn't you be unusually vulnerable to crime? Why would you want a service that isn't safe for you?

That is how your comment sounds to people who use public transport. It sounds ridiculous.

Are you suggesting that a footpath is safe?

My father got mugged at knifepoint on one. That is 100% not acceptable. It is a major reason why normal non-poor people encase themselves in cars.

My father wasn't even blind. He was just slightly old, maybe 50 years old. At that age, he could no longer sprint away.

The comment might sound ridiculous to the people who voluntarily use public transport, but your sampling bias is gigantic in that case.

People are downvoting because you're missing the point. The unsafety of the situation is not because of the mode of transport, but because of America's failure to deal with crime.

Here in Germany, crime rates have been declining pretty consistently [1], with homicides and robberies down from "low" to "very low". The thought of getting mugged on the street or on public transit is just absurd to me. I don't know anyone whom it happened to. It's something that happens on CSI, not in real life.

[1] Except for internet-related fraud and Crystal Method abuse (since these are still pretty new), and stuff like unlawful border crossing (because of the refugee situation).

> Are you suggesting that a footpath is safe

You mean they aren’t safe where you live?

Blimey. I’ve been attacked once, in total, and that was as a teen and an adult intervened within seconds.

I used to walk to school if I missed the bus (or if I wanted to miss mandatory religious activities), and that took me an hour. Sometimes I’d walk home afterwards, because the school had a then-novel internet connection. I’ve walked a few hundred kilometres around Berlin in the last few months, and explored several other European cities by walking around on foot for hours each day. If you go to Venice, your only options are foot or boat, and the boats don’t go everywhere.

Sorry to hear that your father went through this.

You may care to consider that people get held up in cars, even in their own homes.

If you're really concerned about mugging in public areas, there are basic safety steps that everyone can (should) take. Stick to well lit areas; don't wear headphones; don't use your phone; avoid any situation that doesn't feel right. If possible plan your route. In other words, have your wits about you.

Also, re the non-poor encasing themselves in cars. Crime increases when people perceive an increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots. Does this mean the rich should use footpaths to reduce mugging? Probably not. But it might mean that public transport should get major investment so it's not seen as a shitty option only for the poor. If that's really how it's seen, everyone who has no option but to walk must feel constantly pissed off.

I know several people who have been injured in car accidents through no fault of their own (While being in a car). Wouldn't you want a method of transportation which is safe for you?

Did you know that crime occurs on the roadways too? There is vehicular homicide, drive by shootings, auto burglary, and hit and runs. Being in a car does not magically protect you from crime.

I don't think this should be dismissed entirely, as it's still a risk in Europe. Especially at night. Every now and again someone suggests women-only train carriages or some other gimmick in response: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41020179 . Or Scotrail's occasional (more justified) alcohol-free trains.

But during commuter hours, there isn't usually space for crime. And a real comparison of injuries per passenger mile would be instructive - cars aren't exactly safe either.

I do think we should avoid painting public transport as a utopia when it also can have access issues. We should just recognise it as an equal option that can be more comfortable and faster than sitting in a traffic jam and cheaper than paying the real cost of parking (which is often subsidised or hidden in the US)

If you’re referring to me being more of a target, my experience has been the opposite. I have found that I’m generally given a very wide berth when I have my white cane out. Often people hold doors for me too. I have a suspicion that most would-be criminals have a concept of karma and fear that robbing a blind person would bring lots of extra bad luck to their table.

Yes, you seem like more of a target.

It looks like you've decided the risk is worthwhile. I hope your luck holds. I think I'd be completely terrified. I found big cities scary even when I was a strong/fast 20-year-old male.

In terms of safety a lot of people die in car crashes, less so on trains and busses.

Saftey in this case doesn't refer to the risk of dying in a crash, but rather the risk of being mugged/robbed or even just harassed.

It's very convenient to exclude everything from the definition that doesn't support your argument.

What argument? If you want to change people's behaviour you have to focus on their perceived fears, not just the actual risks.

If this is a significant risk then your society is severely broken and public transport is the least of your worries.

Consider for a moment that the poster of that comment has severe confirmation biased.

Hmm? I feel like carjackings are more likely to happen than random crimes on transit...

I do suppose you might have to share space with poor people instead of ignoring them.

Incredible how HN groupthink downvotes you instead of addressing your perfectly valid concerns

Because he doesn't want to depend on someone to drive him around.

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