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Comment by RcouF1uZ4gsC | Hacker News Reader

This seems to be like looking at a CPU die and commenting how inefficient it is to have so many on die transistors devoted to cache.

The truth is you need a place to put people (and data in the CPU world) while they are going about their lives and moving from place to place.

To move from place to place, it seems the average American prefers their car, since it generally runs on their timetable, and they do not have to share personal space with strangers.

And it is not just an American thing. If you look at developing countries like India and China, car ownership and usage is exploding as people grow wealthier.

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> To move from place to place, it seems the average American prefers their car

I’m sorry but I really hate this argument. In most places in the US it’s impossible to use anything but a car to get around. It’s not that most of these articles want to ban cars, most are just trying get public transit/biking/walking as a second option.

You can’t have only one option then walk around saying “well I guess Americans really prefer this option, we shouldn’t give them any other options”.

> And it is not just an American thing. If you look at developing countries like India and China, car ownership and usage is exploding as people grow wealthier.

This is, as usual a thing in degrees. The number of US cars owned sits at 96-100% of the drive-able population. China is at ~30%. India is ~10%. A commenter mentions Europe as having “a lot of cars” but a quick eyeball shows that most European countries have roughly 1/3 fewer cars than America. These aren’t trivial differences that you can just handwave away.

It's actually loathsome how bad urban planning infrastructure is in most of the U.S and Canada. It's deliberately so bad that in many cases, even in small towns, it makes more sense to get in your car (truck) than to walk to the next store over.

In dense urban cores, I think people (to the extent that they are able) can and will self select for what they prefer. IMO urban cores should be fairly hostile to cars, in order to maintain space efficiency and work well for the largest quantity of people. If you optimize an urban core for cars, nobody has a good time. If you optimize it for throughput, at least people walking, biking, and taking trains/subways can have a good time. It's just a utility argument, but that's where policy needs to step in to nudge us away from a local minimum of every individual city dweller wanting their own SUV.

There is endless suburban sprawl in the US that does accommodate cars, and people that feel the need to drive a massive vehicle are welcome there.

And this is coming from someone owning 7 cars living out in the sticks. But when I did live in Seattle the train and bike infrastructure made the city so much more livable when working downtown.

> If you look at developing countries like India and China, car ownership and usage is exploding as people grow wealthier.

Urban planning in these places will naturally cap car ownership, i.e. in PRC cities have 0.5 - 1 parking spaces per car vs 3-6 in US. Ownership is not going to explode to the point of replicating comparable problems of car centric urban design. It comes with it's own downsides of course.

Even in Europe, cars are very prevalent. It cannot simply be a conspiracy by American car companies to force people to want private transportation.

Go where you want (99.99% of places where there is a building there is road), when you want and carry with you 0 to 80,000lbs of stuff at a mile a minute. People who are into doing stuff and going places like that. Freedom, as they say.

Total freedom 100% of the time, except when anyone needs to get to roughly the same place within a 2 hour window of anyone else going in approximately the same direction.

The fact is that until somewhat recently cars were very inexpensive compared to the income of most Americans.

Cars in Europe are a bit more expensive, and a lot more expensive in the third world. But in everywhere we always saw the same thing, as soon as people could buy a car, they would buy one.

And once someone has a car, they would also tend to move further to bigger places. Most people outside HN bubble like cars and their convenience.

> Most people outside... like cars and their convenience

Everyone loves [the first order effects of] cars. Climate control, directly to where you need to go, whenever suits you, for a high upfront, but low ongoing cost.

Everyone fucking hates the second order effects (see: literally anybodys take on traffic). Climate change, more danger to everyone around them (from pedestrians to motorcyclists to other drivers), noise pollution, and air pollution from tires and exhaust. Everyone likes them, typically right up to when they aren't the driver [0]

[0] Some gearheads break this rule, but I think nearly all of them would agree that requiring the average person to maintain and drive their car isn't great, considering the average driver's skillset.

Which ironically just generates more car use, because car drivers male 1-1 associations between people and cars and congestion, and then use their cars to get away from people.

Somehow, not owning a car, I rarely feel like there's too many people around, perhaps unless it's peak tourist season; I just associate the miserable parts with cars alone rather than people in-general. In fact, it's almost always a positive contribution to my day-to-day life. But when I seldom borrow a car, I remember why they feel this way.

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