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Comment by mynameishere | Hacker News Reader

You're blaming street width? Why not blame oxidation or the vulcanization of rubber? Those are also involved.

For my part, I blame the shitheads not getting their asses thrown in jail with vigorous immediacy. Let the cops barricade the roads and load up the wagons.

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HN draws in a large urban audience. A small, but vocal subset of urbanites absolutely hate car transportation and suburbia. It's a fast growing subculture with many adherents. They favor bike and rail transportation, "complete streets", and removal of surface parking lots.

The /r/fuckcars subreddit, for example, would absolutely turn this thread into an anti-car talking point.

I personally don’t hate cars, but I hate that we let them park anywhere for basically free. If we built more high-volume garages and then banned street parking in city cores, our sidewalk cafes and restaurant culture would improve dramatically. Remove parking, expand the sidewalks.

They do have a point though. It’s pretty hard to do donuts in a train!

Road width is an issue because it inherently encourages fast, not uncommonly reckless, driving. There's a science to this which is implemented in places like the Netherlands, but it gets totally ignored by people who are excessively pro-car.

I'm sure that works well for a country the size of the Netherlands (33500km²). The 48 contiguous US states, on the other hand, comprise an area of 8 million km², and people need a way to travel and travel quickly. The alternative to accessible transportation (and affordable housing) is de facto segregation, and I was raised to believe that's a bad thing lol

How about both? Let’s fix street design AND throw all these people in prison.

It's a trendy hobbyhorse for the past couple of years: Every problem with cities is because of car culture. And the problem with rural areas is they aren't cities, because of car culture.

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