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Comment by rsynnott | Hacker News Reader

I never got around to learning to drive (always worked in Dublin, and moved into the city centre after college), and was quite shocked to discover just _how_ much people were spending on it (for instance, apparently avg price of a new car here is 35k; I'd have guessed maybe 10-15 if you'd asked me)?

Of course, there are tradeoffs there; my house cost a _lot_ more than a house in the middle of nowhere, certainly. But all in all I'm glad I avoided tethering myself to a car (I do plan to learn at some point, as it feels like the sort of thing I should be able to do before I'm 40, but I can't see myself actually buying one).

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To your point, the people who use/think they need cars probably have a lot of misconceptions about not having them.

But at least they’ve both had and have not had cars.

Not to your point, if you’ve never had a car or even experienced the joys of driving itself or simply being able to go far away on a moment’s notice, your “gladness” of its avoidance may ring as hollow as the blind individual who is “glad” they aren’t bound to the tyranny of visual entertainments. I mean, that’s a nice story you’re telling yourself, but do you really have to information to know?

In particular, once you have children, a vehicle becomes a near-necessity anywhere outside a city.

> simply being able to go far away on a moment’s notice

Buy intercity bus ticket on internet, 15 minute bus journey to where the intercity buses congregate, get on bus. Or train, but Irish Rail likes to charge roughly 2x as much for same-day intercity tickets as next day.

Now, if you want to go to the middle of nowhere, that's harder, I suppose, but towns and cities are easy enough (caveat: Ireland's transport system is rather poorly designed and ~everything radiates out of Dublin, so this probably only works well if you live _in_ Dublin).

As I say, I do plan to get around to learning to drive at some point (my last attempt was foiled by covid; I got a provisional license in Feb 2020), but honestly it's hard to prioritise.

Kids would be more of an issue, granted. I mostly walked or got the bus to school, but I do think that’s less common these days. As a late-30s gay man, not something I have to personally worry about too much, tho.

Few issues highlight just how different the US is from most European countries as well as public transit. Intellectually we all know the US is huge but we don't have a conceptual model of just how crazy big it is in comparison to any European country.

> Not to your point, if you’ve never had a car or even experienced the joys of driving itself or simply being able to go far away on a moment’s notice

I own a car after living for years without one, and for every “I can go away on a moment’s notice” (what they sell you) there is 100 times you spend in traffic at rush hour moving at 4mph.

There’s something truly liberating in living in a city where you can just take the bus to a fancy restaurant, get drunk and not put other lives in danger. Or just walk to the park, the playground or the library.

Or I don't drive into the city at rush hour (usually, sometimes circumstances are different but I try to take the train). But I use my car all the time.

I think that's part of the difference though in what you're interested in though.

Where I live, If you were shooting long range rifle on a 900+ meter range, public transit isn't going to have service that area because it's 90 minutes outside of the city on dirt roads. The more modern pistol / carbine shooting facility nowadays are outside of city limits as well. You get similar issues with if you play paintball, airsoft, if you're into mountain biking, hunting, fishing, etc. Most of the ways to access those are out in far flung rural areas that you can't get to by bus.

If things in the city are what interest you then I can see where you're coming from. Me personally it isn't overly interesting though. I detest bars, I don't eat out, I haven't watched a movie in the last decade, I find live music and theater dull, boring, and uninteresting, and most of my shopping is done at Costco, the grocery store, or online. So... more or less that cuts out 99.99999% of the venues inside of a city for me personally.

Where I live, If you were shooting long range rifle on a 900+ meter range

they'd ask why you aren't shooting across your own land at 5,000 meter and who calls 900m long range anyway? ( watch?v=7owwTz7Z0OE )

Yes. Though I’ve been paintballing once or twice, years ago; looks like the place I did it is an hour away (two buses, 10 minute walk) or 30 mins by car. Got to admit shooting never even crossed my mind, but there seem to be a few rifle ranges about an hour away. There seems to generally be a lot of this stuff in the outer suburbs.

My visits to the US have been fairly limited, and mostly to San Francisco, so I’m not sure how typical this is, but one thing that surprised me about San Francisco was that, while there’s a reasonably extensive public transport system in the actual city, it more or less stops dead once you leave. Here, it certainly fades out, but areas where suburban becomes rural are often fairly accessible.

Perhaps. Forgive me for doing so, I did google some rifle ranges in Ireland and the only comparable rifle range to the one I'm speaking of is the Midlands National Shooting Center of Ireland near Tullamore, and it has similar problem to what I was talking about for our long range facilities. We have smaller ranges I think similar to the the ones I believe you're talking about much closer to the city limits and a handful of indoor ranges within city limits.

>but one thing that surprised me about San Francisco was that, while there’s a reasonably extensive public transport system in the actual city, it more or less stops dead once you leave.

I suppose it's a jurisdiction issue. The city here is quick to expand bus service whenever the borders expand or to new communities, but they do not service anything outside of the limits whatsoever. There's little in the way of public transit outside of the municipal level.

Yeah, that might be the difference. We used to have a national system and a Dublin system, but the Dublin system had a very expansive definition of ‘Dublin’ and operated well outside the Dublin local authorities. We now have a national system, though in practice Dublin and area is still a bit of a special case.

Well, "average" price of a car is inflated by people who buy way more car than they need. A 35k average includes all sorts of high-end SUVs and sports or luxury cars. A basic car for modest needs is still under 20k euro. (Not that this invalidates your point, cars are indeed expensive, but just clarifying.)

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