This makes me wonder what it’s like being a small car European family with three young kids trying to do something with their weekend.
I wanted to dismiss this saying how my suv is packed for a day at the beach. But surely they do stuff too.
I wanted to dismiss this saying how my suv is packed for a day at the beach. But surely they do stuff too.
You don’t even need a car. In countries with decent cycling infrastructure, it is possible to go on a weekend with young kids on a bicycle. Kids go in the trailer, or if over ≈4, on the trail-a-bike or, if over ≈7, on their own bicycle.
Children aged 7 can drive on the sidewalk in many countries. You can transport bikes on public transit to get to something that resembles nature, then ride there (with no cars in sight).
but while driving a car you are exposing others to that risk.
> They don't even have the coordinaton to land properly
yes they do
Other regions have discovered cycling tourists as income source. I’ve made the entire stretch from the Baltic Sea to Berlin by cargo bike with our 18 month toddler without major stretches on any public road. A large chunk is on the service roads for the oder river flood dam works. A similar path exists on long stretches of the Rhine river - my parents and I made the treck up the Rhine to the Bodensee when I was like 14 or so. And that was like 30 years ago, things have considerably improved since then.
Sure, it does take some planning and consulting maps, but it’s not impossible. Especially since mapping applications have started to support bike-friendly routing. There’s also companies offering per-planned trecks where they transport your luggage and you just take the ride.
And then there’s the Netherlands where they probably wouldn’t even be able to parse your statement. I sometimes have the feeling they get born on wheels.
Also, of course, few families actually _have_ three kids: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
Larger cars, SUVs and people carriers do exist in Europe, but the average family won't need one.
And you can take kids on the bus/train.
But... my own youngest and oldest are almost exactly three years apart, so I can tell you that even a Toyota Camry was incapable of handling three American-standard carseats side-by-side.
However, in countries with lower speed limits, less bulky carseats are required to keep kids safe even in the unusual case of three closely-spaced kids.
The age limit recommendation are a rear-facing seat until 2, then a front-facing seat until they reach something like 65 pounds, then a booster seat.
From experience, three car seats cannot fit side-by-side in really any car, whether front-facing or rear-facing. But booster seats are fine, even in my tiny Fiat 500e. Back in the day, I leased a minivan for a while and then the kids started to outgrow bulky carseats.
But living standards are higher in the US, and our trips are longer. To drive my family across Texas is nearly as far as driving across France and Germany, and I have three other states to cross.
If I can afford to pay more to get a bigger, faster, safer vehicle for the trip, it’s my money.
I doubt there is any conventional metric for "standard of living" (which basically means per capita wealth/income) where the UK would be higher than the US, at almost any point on the income scale (even adjusted for the imputed value of the more extensive public health system in the UK).
That doesn't mean the UK is "worse" than the US, or that it has a lower quality of life, just that it has (and has had) a lower standard of living for decades. Few countries car match the standard of living of the US.
EDIT: Yesterday I had to run to the store to pick up a vat of queso. I'd like to see you Europeans do that in your Mr. Bean cars.
That said, I find it notable that the average price of new cars in the US has typically been rising faster than income over the last decade or so. This would indicate, bluntly, effective advertising, rather than resources, being a big driver of the huge car thing. Average new car price in the US is creeping up on average annual income. This isn’t just an American problem, incidentally; it’s happening in a good few countries.
I live in an urban area and they are prevalent. Dumb@sses trying to do a three point turn in an urban area with their tank-people-carrier.
People are just stup!d. Let's be honest.
It may be worth saying that everything in America is bigger than its European counterpart, to a first approximation. You can tell that Tesla's are designed for an American market by just how fat the back is compared to (say) a Mercedes S-class - it still fits on the road but it's very voluptuous
The four year old is towed using a follow-me, all the gear goes in a couple of panniers.
We have spent a small part of our car-money on some very high quality gear, through. Small and light equipment is much easier to pack than Walmart camping gear.
Going home, we added a cat, its transport box and toys/accessories/food. Not a problem.
In the Peugeot 406 (midsize sedan) I had after that, we were 5 adults going to weight lifting competitions, so you can probably guess that none of us were exactly tiny. Also not a problem.