Ask HN: What are you doing to kill the car? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are you doing to kill the car?

6 pointsazdle4 comments

Seriously, I think that the personal automobile was our specie's biggest mistake. Whether it's climate change, noise pollution, or death from automobile accidents, cars are no doubt a problem. The technology of cars got our urban (and honestly even suburban) areas into this problem. What tech are you working on to get us out of this problem?

PS: I hate my job right now and am planning on taking a year off, but if you're working in this and need someone with embedded(-Linux) Rust experience HMU (email in profile), I want to make a useful difference in this world.

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I've never owned a car. And I travel a lot, but only to walkable cities around the world.

I'd love to explore more of the US so feel free to recommend any walkable areas outside of NYC.

I would also love to hear answers to this. I need a vacation. (Though I probably won't go until the pandemic is better taken care of...)

I'm asking this because I live in an urban area, but I still have to rely on a car, unless I want to pay >2x for my groceries at the one place that is with in walking distance. And I don't have enough of a death wish to bike to places except directly to the trail neary my place for pandemic exercise.

I would love it if the public transit around me was good enough to go grocery shopping regularly. But it's either a five minute drive or a 45 minute bus ride. With than I'll just pay for the car. I'm lucky, I can afford it. But I still hate that it's my only real option. (I'm still super sad that Car2Go left MPLS and no real replacements have shown up.)

I dream of some sort of PRT system pushing out cars, at least from the urban area. Ideally grade separated, like a suspended monodrail pod system. But, even I can't pretend that that is anything that could happen anytime soon.

Are you working on something more realistic? It's probably not an end game solution, but are you working on something that improves the status quo? Or if not what do you wish you could work on?

I use my bike as much as possible. Commuting, shopping, I’m on it almost every day. Well, not so much commuting now.

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