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Comment by njarboe | Hacker News Reader

Driving is an amazing. It allows everyone huge amounts of freedom in what they do and who they spend time with. Having lots of shops and workplaces near your home is great and should be encouraged, but we should try and find ways to keep the freedom of personal transportation and reduce the impact it has. Lots and lots of tunnels, better tires, electric cars use brakes much less and could get to almost zero, etc.

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That's basically how driving was sold to the American public in the 1950s. The reality is that transportation is a network, and driving is only efficient for the individual driver at a relatively low level of density. The bigger the population and the more people who drive, the less efficient the network. If you try to keep the network efficient, then driving acts as a constraint on the rest of societal development and you end up with sprawl and long transit times. Driving doesn't scale beyond a certain point (as you know, by suggesting expensive tunnels).

As for the freedom aspect, to get anywhere in an American suburb-styled society you are required to own and maintain a car, a major personal expense. When you travel somewhere, you have to find a place to safely park your car, and your person is tethered to where you park your car, usually needing to return there in a reasonable amount of time the same day, or else paying for long-term parking. You have to have a license from the government to use the only practical source of transportation, and if you don't have that license, you are effectively shut off from any autonomy. Cars certainly do increase the freedom to move and experience the world in some ways, but that is at the cost of other freedoms.

> freedom

It's also stupidly expensive for most people, and made us develop a car centric approach to a lot of things, a lot of problems it solves are problems we wouldn't have if we designed our cities in other ways

Replacing the current 2b vehicles on earth by electric vehicles will buy us a few years at best but it won't solve the deeper issues

> freedom

Including the freedom to spend the equivalent of weeks every year stuck in traffic:

https://thecitypaperbogota.com/bogota/bogota-tops-tomtoms-gl...

Travel time is travel time, you would have a similar tally on the train/bus/walking. This isn't really the best argument against cars because people buy cars because it's a massive improvement on "waiting for the bus time."

It's really not. You can actually do stuff waiting for the bus, or riding the bus. You can't really do much while driving. Walking is incredibly good for you, unlike driving.

Time on the bike or walking is time spent improving health and well being. Time on the train can be productive, relaxing or entertaining. There is an enormous difference between these and the stress of driving.

I don't really understand this statement. Do you genuinely think that there is no difference in QOL between a 30 minute drive on a packed freeway vs a 40 minute walk on pleasant streets? Personally, I'd leave 10 minutes earlier and choose the latter every time. Even better, walking time is remarkably consistent. On foot, I essentially never have to worry about my travel being disrupted by road conditions which means I know when I arrive based on when I leave which is not the case at all with driving which has a much higher variance.

> Driving is an amazing.

As long as everyone isn't forced to do it at the same place at the same time.

Driving less goes a long way into making it more amazing.

Driving is great for the one-offs and other people aren't doing it. It's awful anytime else.

> keep the freedom of personal transportation and reduce the impact it has

We've had the answer for longer than we've had cars. Put on the helmet and pedal away!

Driving is an amazing.

Your car brain got so excited about driving that it forgot basic grammar.

(It's okay, it happens to me too sometimes).

Yes, please may I have some more of the unmitigated freedom to pay a ballooning portion of household income toward a depreciating asset; the absolute pleasure of having to buy government-mandated insurance; the utter relief of participating in one of the most dangerous daily activities; the free choice of being able to salt the earth with CO2 emissions and tire particulate matter; and who can forget the ~socialized~ capitalist federal- and state-built roadways that cities are going bankrupt trying to keep up with funding.

Not to mention the sheer joy of listening to the roar of traffic pretty much everywhere, the cost of sound insulation so that I can sleep at night, the increased medical costs (pollution/obesity/stress), drive through litter, being bullied off the road if you're not in a car, and having to either give way to metal box owners or cross roads at locations intended purely to enable them to move freely. All the while watching endless ads that'd make the Marlboro man blush - endless empty roads and vehicles that wouldn't harm a fluffy bunny. Yep, freedumb.

> Driving is an amazing. It allows everyone huge amounts of freedom

Your definition of "everyone" excludes children, many seniors, people who can't afford a personal vehicle, and those who can't drive due to disabilities or health conditions. You're also naively ignoring that just the infrastructure needed to support cars on its own often greatly impinges on these groups' freedom of movement.

It is definitely and/and.

Cars are best for the stuff they show on the commercials; driving to the weekend cabin, hauling a thing, impressing a date, going on the family trip.

So yeah, keep the driving, but for the one-off things where they are great at. That's really the only time when a car represents freedom. They are not freedom when it's the only option to get a loaf of bread or get to your office.

Cars are our worst invention, second only to agriculture.

did you forget gunpowder and religion?

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