https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
Which makes importing smaller trucks like you see in other countries cost prohibitive
We've got the Maverick hybird which does 99% of the farm stuff.
And we also have a tow equipped expedition that we use when we need to haul horses or the big trailer. The expedition also comes in handy when we regularly haul 6+ people.
I've had the need for a gooseneck trailer maybe once in the last decade.
Weird that the more unsafe (to everyone else) and wasteful and polluting but also more profitable to industry modern trucks and SUVs are legal in their place!
Bam, SUVs are really unattractive.
As you can see, those requirements just get gamed.
Instead of complicated rules, just tax fuel (or emissions etc), and consumers will institute their own personal fuel efficiency requirements.
No, because that harm small fun sports cars. The problem is big cars. Just ban big cars.
More fuel you consume more emissions you produce, more distance you go, more road your wear occurs.
Do you want to get 8l V8 engine? Fine, just pay your fuel taxes.
Pinning fuel use seems to be the way to go, rather than penalizing engine geometry, for this reason.
It's important to remember, though, that semi-trucks get 5-8 miles to the gallon due to their weight/purpose. Perhaps these new fuel taxes should only affect classes other than A, B, and C to avoid knock-on effects.
What's interesting here is that semi-trucks cause exponentially more wear and tear on the roads than consumer vehicles, while not paying the corresponding fuel tax — they're being subsidized by everyday drivers.
Also the knock on effects may not be completely negative, it could mean that it isn't economical to drive a truck door-to-door filled with low value merchandise (And give retail a fighting chance).
What I was worried about was trucks used to transport groceries, not delivery trucks.
Last thing the poor need right now is the cost of food going even higher. They're already struggling to get by as it is.
Basically, tax fuel and tax the car.
But no need for outright bans. Almost any externality you can think of from (big) cars is finite, and thus a finite tax is appropriate.
That's not likely to succeed, because:
1. People — individuals and companies — try to game the tax system at least as much as they do pollution regulations, and probably much more so because tax obligations are largely self-reported with only sporadic auditing to catch cheaters and gamers.
2. Certain political elements are always trying to defund the tax auditors (e.g., the IRS). We might well ask why that is.
3. Politically, tax hikes are always harder to get through Congress — and to keep in force — than sensible standards for products and behaviors that voters can see are beneficial to them (e.g., pollution prohibitions).
> 2. Certain political elements are always trying to defund the tax auditors (e.g., the IRS). We might well ask why that is.
Tax the petrol itself. That works reasonably well in most of the world. No need for complicated individual audits etc.
> 3. Politically, tax hikes are always harder to get through Congress — and to keep in force — than sensible standards for products and behaviors that voters can see are beneficial to them (e.g., pollution prohibitions).
I don't know. We kicked off the whole discussion because the standards you have are NOT sensible.
True — but see my #3 above (political problems), and then add 3.1: Special-interest groups, which donate heavily to politicians' campaigns, always lobby for tax breaks of various kinds, e.g., tax deductions (at the federal level) for state- and local sales- and property taxes.
At a high enough tax rate, the would-be gas guzzlers' contribution to the fisc outweighs their probabilistic homicide.
I hate them.
I dream of the day, when proper night vision gear with the result displayed to the front window will be standard in cars, so all the cars can have no, or very soft lights to drive around savely at night.
Also, why not heat vision to better spot humans (and animals)? For the AI as well as the humans.
Is the tech military restricted?
Probably partly.
digital is controlled but more widely made, but also barely worth it.
the real issue is how to display it. for head-mounted setups it's essentially full field of view, and in monocular use combination is subconscious, but it's still rather awkward and requires practice. you can't achieve the same effect on a windshield, even with HUD.
cadillac had this feature in the 90s, though.
https://hudway.co/blog/history-of-automotive-heads-up-displa...
Unfortunately, yes. I know that there are various sci-fi solutions in the labs already, of projecting the image directly into the eye, or correctly on the windshield while taking the head position of the driver into account, but it probably takes a long time till they are a) reliable b) affordable c) standard in every car
If it was ~20 years ago it wasn't even that big compared to today!
And I don't mean the driver was an asshole, it simply wouldn't have fit in otherwise.
Ridiculous vehicle.
Well...
In the former soviet block, you don't "find somewhere else" to park your car. You grab the first spot where you fit because you don't know if there is another free anywhere else.
Incidentally, that's why i like 4 meter cars. On streets with parallel parking, they fit in more places than the 4.5 m or more.
> Well...
Okay he could have been an asshole for other reasons, including for importing the F-150 here.
But the parking spots were at 45 degree angle and while it was narrow enough to fit in two if parked at 45, it was too long and it would have blocked the access lane with the tip. So it was parallel parked on 3 which was the only way to not block anyone.
So, bad driving skills and realizing it via lack of self-trust, being compensated with degradation of roads and parking for everybody else, or just throwing money at the problem (without fixing underlying issue, but feeling less shitty about it).
All could be easily solved by proportional taxation. Swiss folks figured it like many other things already, each canton has their own car tax rules but most are some formula with horse powers and car weight combined. No chance this decade for anything similar in the US I believe.
In the 1990s, I had a sweet little Honda Civic hatchback that got great mileage and handled beautifully.
But towards the end of the decade, the roads in my area were filled with aggressive drivers in Ford and Jeep SUVs who just were obnoxious. I felt forced to switch to a larger car just to feel safe on the road.
She was walking right behind her parents, but the driver could not see her because the vehicle was too high, so thought the road was free when the parents had passed through.
The court decided that the driver was at no fault as it was impossible to see the girl from his position.
I hope that means that the vehicle manufacturer is on a murder trial then. But I do not have illusions that this will lead to actual change.
Edit: Basically any car from Suzuki would be a hit in the US: https://www.suzukiauto.co.za/new-cars
This is blatantly false. See: the Mitsubishi Mirage as just one example.
(I don't know about erikw's claims about small cars being illegal in the US. So I don't want to express an opinion on that.)
They are perfectly legal to sell. There's just little demand and most manufacturers have discontinued sales.
I own a not-quite-that small car and the manufacturer discontinued US sales for the same reason - the lack thereof. That's why the Smart Fortwo discontinued sales in the US in 2019. The US market for good or for bad just does not want small cars. Many manufacturers are even dropping their sedans for sales reasons; e.g., Ford dropped the Fusion and Focus.
I didn't much care either way, but I do still consider this when comparing new vehicles.
WTF !
Pedestrian mirrors (allowing lorry drivers to see any pedestrians immediately in front and to the side) have been a legal requirement for years in Blighty.
https://tfl.gov.uk/cdn/static/cms/images/safer-lorries-schem...
My Subaru has almost zero free space under the hood and there are all kinds of repairs I wouldn't attempt because you have to disassemble half the engine to get to anything.
I always wonder if cars that are particularly top heavy could be flipped over while parked by particularly strong pedestrians
"I remember wanting it to feel very locomotive - like a massive fist moving through the air"
I suppose it appeals to a kind of selfish stupidity.
I've never felt it hindered me at all, except for a longing at times to live rurally. I've worked in different countries around a wide array of people in tech, both in project management and software engineering roles. My kids now have the same experience as you - they can walk outside at any given moment and have someone to play with in our subdivision, and they seem to really like it. But of course we are constantly going back to where I grew up to land my family owns, hunting, riding 4 wheelers, etc...
I think it's probably dependent on the person, but balance always seems like a good starting point.
Let this happen to enough people constantly coming and going and moving…the community is gone. It’s just a cumulative effect.
Some of this is undoubtedly going where opportunities exist; my graduating high school class (late 00s) for example all moved away from the area I grew up in simply because there’s nothing out there except for a handful of dead end minimum wage jobs, with prospects declining further as time goes on. The prior two generations by comparison largely stayed put, with moves being very local in nature and mostly driven by finding suitable housing (e.g. apartment became too small for family or keeping rent down).
I also believe that people who’ve had to move around a lot for career are more likely to continue to move regularly because they’ve grown accustomed to not having deep roots anywhere which the resulting reset less of a big deal, which multiplies the impact of needing to move for work opportunities.
https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2016/10/what-c... has more recent data. The headline of 'What Caused the Decline in Interstate Migration in the United States?' might be telling.
See also https://www.brookings.edu/articles/u-s-migration-still-at-hi...
> Annual movement within the U.S. is stuck at a postwar low rate of 11 percent. This 2016-2017 rate is not statistically different than the 11.2 percent rate of 2015-2016, the lowest mobility rate in any year since this annual series began in 1947-48 (see Figure 1). The decline in annual mobility rates, from over 20 percent during some years in the 1950s and 1960s down to almost half that today, is the result of long term trends, such as the aging of the population (older people move less than younger people) and rises in homeownership (owners move less than renters). Yet the downward mobility trend of the last decade can certainly be tied to the lasting effects of the Great Recession and housing bust which occurred over the 2007-2009 period.
Depends where in Japan; I live in a small city, and it is the worst urban sprawl that you could ever imagine. You absolutely need a car for everything, but at the same time the streets are really narrow and dark, and without sidewalks. It is not fun, to put it mildly.
Still, driving through a dark and narrow street or road, especially at night (coming back from work), with pedestrians wearing dark clothes (some people are smart enough to wear reflecting bands, but they are few and far between), is quite stressful. Many times I have been surprised by a pedestrian appearing out of the shadows only a few meters in front of me.
Likewise, being the pedestrian is also stressful. People don't believe me when I say I feel unsafe walking out at night here. Sure, I don't have to fear criminals, but I fear the cars.
If you think driving in those dark streets being surprised by pedestrians is stressful, imagine how it feels for the people walking outside your vehicle when you barely miss them and their children.
If you can't see your neighbors, slow your vehicle down to a safe speed. You are driving too fast for the conditions. It is entirely under your control and you continue to choose to put your neighbors in danger.
You are the one operating heavy machinery and introducing danger into a situation where there would be none if it wasn't for your disregard for their safety.
I guess our strategy is we just don't let her have any screens. They make her absolutely insane. So instead she leaves the house as soon as she can and goes out and plays. Even her 5 year old sister who is wheelchair bound goes with her a lot of the time, in the $1200 Thule buggy super stroller we bought (used). I guess we just lucked out, but we also insisted on it and kept letting her go out even after some woman called CPS on us for letting our kid be unsupervised. We live in a middle class neighborhood with people from dozens of countries and every major religions living together, and all our kids play together. I'm sure it's someone's mental image of the ideal childhood.
If 6pm and no knowledge was ok, almost 9pm with streetlights still off is too.
Then she realized we can now call her and tell her to come home when she's out.
"I'll leave the phone at home, daddy, I'm afraid I'll break it while playing."
So yeah, your gauge of what 9pm means might not be accurate for the situation! I doubt you were imagining 9pm being bright and an hour or two before its too dark for a young person to be out riding a bike, but that could well be the case
“Bye, have fun, come in when the street lights come on” is entirely appropriate for a 9-year-old when school’s not in session. It’s playing outside, not playing fortnight or drooling to the YouTube algo. It’s ok for that to run a little late in the summer.
For fucks sake, she's 9 years old, let a kid be a kid and not a productivity machine, she will have her whole life to worry about that later... At that age the worse that can happen academically speaking is taking a bit longer to learn how to multiply and divide numbers.
At that age is easy to pick up bad habits and also easy to let them go, OP seems to be a good enough parent to nudge their kid into better habits if they deem necessary.
(Not actually 'bad', but trendsetters that helped some of the other kinds come out to play more.)
Do you home school? Because if you don't home school, surprise! "Bad" kids are everywhere, including in any school that exists.
The best you can do is talk about bad influence. Peer pressure. Tailoring that conversation to the child's personality.
My thoughts on this are, the time to teach self-control and responsibility is when young. It won't take completely when young, as the brain is literally not fully developed in that capacity yet, but the lessons can stick, and be known when older.
Those lessons are action->consequence outcomes, and in a sense, borking up responsibility at times becomes a leaning moment. Put another way, mistakes are how we learn, and small mistakes when young, are better than massive mistakes when 20.
Yes, bad habits are a worry. I don't think there is any simple answer here, except independence is important for any adult mind, and that flows from independence in youth.
And of course, this all depends upon the child too. Some have more sense at 5, than others at 50.
I live near kids like this where there parents aren't around they just roam. They get into trouble. How much parenting are you dumping on others.
One group decided it would be fun to smash glass bottles in the parking lot. So I have to do the job if the parent and either tell them to behave, stop and clean it up or clean up after them myself so I don't ruin my tires. Why aren't the real parents doing this?
Or the kids liter, get stuck in trees,lose their stuff, pee on stuff etc. All problems their real parents should be dealing with but instead others have to deal with it. Randoms like me get the negatives of the unsupervised kids.
Im sure their parents think they had a pleasant day playing tag all day though.
Either way, some Americans will hear people talk about Europe or Japan or whatever and tell themself "I totally have that too where I live in the US" yet it's not even close.
I've also lived in a few American cities, and it's a completely different experience. Even from downtown Philly it was inconvenient to get anywhere without a car.
In my experience, if you live in a suburb you do usually have to drive to get to things like stores, restaurants, movie theaters, etc. But what is close are schools and playgrounds. In the suburb I currently live, all three levels of schools and over half a dozen playgrounds are within walking distance.
On the other hand, if i need groceries I just take a backpack and walk 5-10 minutes to one of the 5 different stores. I can even afford to be picky and get my butter from one, bread from the other etc :)
Conversely, I have traveled to Europe and Japan. At least in the areas I went to, it didn't really seem any safer for kids to play outside than many parts of America. Yes, public transit was much better, but there were still lots of cars on the streets, and there were areas that weren't very pedestrian friendly. And in some cities it was quite difficult to find playgrounds. I don't doubt that there are places in Europe and Japan where kids can play outside without worrying about cars. But such conditions are not universal.
That said, my kid rode a bike to school from 5-10th grades in Arizona. She was the only kid that did that.
There are about 7 grocery stores within 5 miles of my suburban house. I have never seen anyone walk/bike to any of them. (I look.) If you tried to you would spend quite a bit of time navigating parking/road infrastructure where the drivers clearly believe is their entire right of way.
In Mexico you would think it would be much worse, but it is light years better. Kids take care of getting themselves to school in Paris, from what we have seen.
This idea that "unless universal, the claim false" is... not helpful. As a family in suburban US we did the bike thing. It fucking sucked.
I have 2 (soon to be 3) grocery stores within a 8-12 minute walk of my very suburban home in my master planned community full of tract homes. I see some people walking to and from the store occasionally and I’ll walk there on occasion in the winter when the weather is nice. I just don’t understand why I would spend 20 minutes doing something that can take me 3.
If we swapped some of this cope energy with a push to change things, maybe we wouldn't have to burn our vacation time to fly across the world to walk to a cafe on a pedestrianized street.
Assholes exist everywhere in the world but I would walk across an ungoverned street intersection in Mexico sooner than cross your average 2+lanes each fully lighted intersection in the US.
Edit: and so I now add, that that's what it means to bump around with your neighbors, near daily. Humans seem to need the street life of a busy neighborhood with pedestrian traffic toward the local suppliers of the banal things of daily life, before they retain the idea of the sanctity of humans when they are thinking more abstractly.
The contradiction of course is WW1 and WW2, which happened in countries all adhering more or less to these characteristics.
So I dunno. Maybe we're all fucked in the end, and I at least will indulge my family in the residual beauty before the inevitable next societal upheaval.
I've learned from HN discussions that there is a vast difference in what people think of as a "suburb".
Some will say it takes over 30 minutes by car from a suburb to the nearest store. To me that's very rural, I'd never consider that a suburb. But some do. So we get these disconnected discussion on how you can/can't do such and such thing in a suburb.
I've nearly always lived in what I consider suburbs. Places with single family homes and parks and playgrounds where I can very easily walk to just about every store or service nearby. The middle schools is an easy walk away for kids. High school is a bit farther but still an easy bike ride for high-school age kids (about 15 minutes).
In Australian English, “suburb” roughly means “neighbourhood”. So to us, downtown (or the CBD as we call it), is a “suburb”. In the Australian sense of the term, the Financial District and the Upper East Side are suburbs of New York City.
That's the idea if used in the North American sense. Suburbs are effectively rural areas, except with a higher population density. You will see rows of houses instead of rows of corn, but otherwise no different.
> Places with single family homes and parks and playgrounds where I can very easily walk to just about every store or service nearby.
What's a town, then?
Usually, yes, but I know of settlements "out in the middle of nowhere" that are nothing but rows of houses. No businesses, schools, or anything of that sort found within the immediate community. One needs to drive through the vast corn fields to another town to access such amenities. It doesn't seem that bizarre.
> (and within a few minutes of stores)
For those at the nearest edge, no doubt. Those at the furthest edge could be quite a distance away. Although, even in a small suburb, often you find the craziest road systems. It might take a half an hour just to drive to a store only a mile away.
Personally I just hate the aesthetic of suburbs, so I'll never live in one, but I think some people in this thread are getting a bit hyperbolic about how inconvenient they are. The suburb in my town takes no more than five minutes to drive across and is directly adjacent to the grocery store. From what I've seen this is typical. The worst I've seen are those in the DC metro area, but even then they have stores all over the place. The real pain in the ass in that region is needing to use/cross multilane roads to get anywhere.
Well, me neither. I grew up on a production farm with actual rows of corn as far as the eye can seen – in what I am quite sure everyone would agree was decidedly rural – and there were still several different towns with stores within a 5-10 minute driving radius.
> I think some people in this thread are getting a bit hyperbolic about how inconvenient they are.
No doubt, but that doesn't really have much to do with the conversation. The conversation is about what we call the places that are just rows upon rows of housing without a shared and vibrant mixture of businesses, hospitals, schools, etc. They're not exactly rural, there are too many people living there to be considered rural, but they aren't like towns or cities either. They are more like rural than anything else.
Suburb seems to be the prevailing term.
A town is a collection of suburbs and the parks, amenities and businesses that are intertwined with them.
I have lived in suburbs near enough to schools that you can walk on 2 occasions in both NC and AZ but this was a very lucky quality, not the norm AT ALL, highly desirable, and you could walk to practically nothing other than the school. Leaving the neighborhood on foot was not a good place to be walking.
No joke; the children’s crossing now terminates on the “island” of the petrol station, with entry and exit for the vehicles of the station either side of the island.
It boggles my mind, truly. I fear it’s only a matter of time before someone gets hurt.
So.. not hard to relate with your post.
I can’t help but notice how poorly people treat eachother in the bigger cities, too. To the point I get constantly complemented for just being a decent person, or aggressively attacked for the same.
Not sure what the answer for any of these problems is..
The biggest cities of Europe (Paris, Amsterdam, etc.) are pretty historical and thus are walkable. However, where I live - Finland that is - much of the country has been built in the past century and is designed for cars. However, in the past decade or two the trend has changed again and the very new neighbourhoods again feel like 100+ year old neighbourhoods in terms of walkability.
Even back then kids weren't clamoring to play outside in the street. Or ride bikes etc (there was a clique at school who were skateboarders but not a widespread thing). I think it very much depends on the kids temperament, my experience as a kid didn't involve a lot of outdoors activities.
However my parents were pretty big on making sure I had exercise I played sport on the weekend (cricket in the summer and soccer in the winter) and it was non-negotiable my parents insisted on it. If not for sport I don't think I'd have spent any time outdoors at all.
I think Weekend Sport might be an Australian cultural thing does the US have weekend kids sports?
Personally, I believe the loss of trust in institutions (major sex scandals in every church, Boy Scouts of America etc.) made parents uneasy about sending their kids somewhere without one of them as a chaperone.
Here in Texas, I also did not trust many of the volunteer coaches. Many of them simply did not know how dangerous heat stroke was. There was also this bizarre old school theory that you shouldn't drink water when exercising in the heat. Instead, they repeat old stories like this...
https://www.espn.com/classic/s/dent_junction_08/02/01.html <excerpt>Out along the edge of the Texas Hill Country, with temperatures soaring beyond 110 degrees, the Texas A&M Aggies gathered that summer in 1954.... ten days of misery forty-seven years ago when players quit the team in droves to avoid the four-hour practices that did not include water breaks or even a kind word from Bryant. It was a miracle that no one died.</excerpt>
(context: suburban CO)
As far as I can tell, American Internet mostly wants you to think that their own culture war is important and relevant universally, including for you. And that their own particular division of issues between their political poles is also somehow universal and important; and that you should get riled up about it.
…Except the 40 000 who do die by car, every single year, in the US alone. Countless more injured and permanently disabled. Meanwhile criminals are indeed a whole different problem. (an imaginary one)
Some other interesting statistics: 25% of pedestrians killed were drunk, while only 19% of the time the driver was (these overlap, both drunk, in 6% of cases.) 3/4ths of pedestrian fatalities occur at night. 2/3rds don't occur in a crosswalk.
Take away: kids who don't drink, don't stay out at night and use crosswalks are significantly less likely to be hit.
https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/road-users/pedestr...
https://www.ghsa.org/resources/news-releases/GHSA/Ped-Spotli...
Criminals bring 0 value and all risk. Criminals also do more than just murder.
> Not necessarily because of cars but significant crime.
And I agree it's usually about racism.
If you live in Europe, just look at the EU Parliament elections and see how the far right did. Or follow the political discourse in pretty much any European country.
If you're not hearing it, your not paying attention to pretty much any political reporting.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/24/what-the-...
"Don't believe me go to Europe and Japan where kids are still allowed to walk"
This is the top rated comment here, the line by itself is about as ridiculous as any other. Every kid in Europe is allowed to walk to school? How is this any different that than the US?
Crime has decreased pretty much everywhere over the last three decades. I am sure there are pockets in the world where it hasn't, but those would be the exception.
[https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-rates-across-wes...]
I live in Europe and I see groups of kids hanging out by themselves all the time in many, many major cities across the continent.
(And what kind of crime? We don’t really have lots of drive-by-shootings here, kids aren’t exactly a prime target for robberies either)
I would say one off the biggest threat for pedestrians in European city are electric scooters.
How many deaths have they caused? How do those stats compare to the deaths caused by motor vehicles? Which one is more dangerous based on that data?
I have looked at local pedestrian casualty statistics and motor vehicles are by far the largest cause of injury and death in the large city where I live. I haven't even been able to find what was the last time that a cyclist or e-scooter rider killed a pedestrian. Meanwhile, cars and trucks have killed four cyclists this year alone.
this is bullshit, cars kill and injure orders of magnitude more people in Europe than scooters do. That's not to say there's 0 issues with scooters, because there are, but focus should remain on cars, not scooters.
The crime that has been *falling* throughout the entire western world after peaking in the mid 1990's ?
crime=/=crime
The park were we hung out as kids is now inhabited by drug dealers. Obviously no place for kids, or families or basically anyone else, I will try to avoid if I reasonably can. And of course there was no increase in statistical crime, as it just is not getting prosecuted, although it is clear as day that it is happening.
Crime stats are hugely misleading if you want to figure out what a social environment looks like.
People talk about the dangerous cars but they were there 40 years ago and my friends and I would bike to school, the mall, or into the hills surrounding us.
My 9 year old's friend lives just two blocks from us and her parents don't let her walk here alone. When I was that age we were riding our bikes for miles in car infested San Jose.
Some of those roads you biked on have probably been widened. Cars have gotten faster, larger, and heavier. Speed limits have increased.
I'm not saying it's guaranteed to be dramatically different but I think there probably is some kind of difference.
Just look at the pedestrian deaths chart for the past 5-10 years or so.
The town I grew up in has a lot of areas that are conducive to children roaming; low traffic speeds and volume, separated sidewalks, parks, green spaces. As kids we ran around freely. The traffic volume and patterns haven't really changed at all and as a whole the community drives pretty slowly, nobody seems to be in a hurry. Yet you never see kids out anymore. Where did they go?
Because it distracts from the parts that many people don't like to talk about because it goes against their personal beliefs (such as religious conservatives being more connected with their communities and overall happier than everyone else)
In more religious countries, are the religious conservatives the ones that are freely roaming streets and socialising more than their peers in a "play-based childhood"?
The obvious changes to me, as a parent now, and someone who still visits the street they grew up on in the 80s, relate to cars.
HN is heavily biased towards tech centers (SF, NYC, Seattle, etc...). These places skew liberal, agnostic, pro-public transport, pro-dense housing.
Conversations will always shift towards these talking points, the few of us that don't fit into one or more of these boxes get drowned out as out-of-touch.
Car dependent design is the problem that prevents children from being able to play with friends, because they are dependent on an adult to bring them somewhere.
Car dependent design also has negative feedback loops for community in other ways. Local shops can't compete with big box chains in the suburbs due to economies of scale and are forced to close, further increasing the need to drive further for basic necessities. Cars are dangerous, further decreasing our base level of trust for interaction with our local community.
These are just the surface of the iceberg though - take an open minded approach to reading up on the second and third order effects of car dependent community development before being so quick to dismiss the topic.
These statements as facts aren't helpful because it implies car dependence is the only thing. There is so much history and nuance here. OP is right, making every discussion essentially '/r/fuckcars' doesn't get us anywhere.
Anecdote: I grew up in a small suburb, 100% car dependence. However I still walked to grade school and rode my bike on roads/sidewalks where cars are the same now as they were in the 90s.
I think back to my childhood and roaming the streets. There wasn't any formal community venue or organisation. No one then or now was going to church. No one was going to a community centre or youth drop-in facility. I don't remember parents coordinating much. We rode bikes on the street, kicked a football and walked to the school basketball court or ovals. Parents generally felt safer about their kids doing that, so it was trivial to walk out front and find another kid to socialise with.
Just as a hint, Europeans love their cars as well. They drive them a lot and outside of large cities public infrastructure is sparse at best and almost never an actually viable alternative.
If they post pictures it is almost always of the few square kilometers of the city where millionaires and shops for millionaires are located. The rest of the city is full of streets and cars are everywhere. The one difference is that there are trains, which usually are awful places but get you from A to B.
In a huuuuge share of the US, this is not the case. There are no sidewalks, you have to travel extremely far to get to anything, and cross highways or even freeways doing it. There's no transit. There's no village center or train station around a natural focal point, just giant strip malls that are few and far between. So EVERYONE. MUST. DRIVE. It is the ONLY option for every trip and errand, there is no alternative. This is insane.
And even Europe, eg Germany, has seen a relative rise in helicopter parenting compared to recent decades.
Have you actually experienced Japanese drivers? They make American drivers look absolutely noble (and truthfully, we are) by comparison.
For starters, and this applies to both individual and professional drivers:
* They don't give way to emergency vehicles blaring the sirens.
* They don't wait for people to finish crossing intersections.
* They don't let other drivers into their lane.
* They drive absurdly fast.
* Most roads are very narrow.
Some particularly busy intersections require dedicated police officer supervision to shepherd the drivers because they're so unruly and disrespectful of pedestrians and other drivers.
There are many reasons Japan is more accepting of letting children be children, but most of that is social factors and motivators that are decidedly different from American ones. Cars are ultimately just a really small part, if any.
> Some particularly busy intersections require dedicated police officer supervision to shepherd the drivers because they're so unruly and disrespectful of pedestrians and other drivers.
So like any intersection in New York.
> There are many reasons Japan is more accepting of letting children be children, but most of that is social factors and motivators that are decidedly different from American ones. Cars are ultimately just a really small part, if any.
Nah. It's cars, more specifically street parking.
I've never seen dedicated police supervision. I have seen directors around road construction. That's no different than in the states.
In America, it is literally against the law to enter an intersection unless you can completely cross it without stopping. That means if a pedestrian is crossing, you wait outside of the intersection for them to finish crossing first.
In Japan? With pedestrians crossing? You enter the intersection and hopefully you stop inches from the crosswalk in the middle of the intersection while you wait for the road to clear and then go through if there is space.
Yes, even professional drivers do it. It's fucking insane if you ask me. How much time do you save? Seconds? And you risk a higher chance of running someone over?
Japan is world renowned for their hospitality, but Japanese drivers are by far some of the biggest assholes I have ever seen in my life.
This is false: it depends on the state. In Arizona, it is the law that you can enter the intersection to turn, and then if the light turns red, everyone has to wait until you complete your turn before they can enter the intersection.
xD
If it is of any consolation, all the gaijin in my office agree with you.
Japan: > Road fatalities per 100 000 population: 2.6
USA: > Road fatalities per 100 000 population: 13.8
[0]https://www.itf-oecd.org/sites/default/files/japan-road-safe... [1]https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit...
You can see it in the stats too,
https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state...
Places like MA and NY are, I think, known for their rude drivers but the fatalities per distance: anomalously low.
My theory is that Japanese drivers are our brothers in attentive, intentional driving.
An alternative theory is that population dense areas like cities promote aggressive driving, but also tend to host slower-speed collisions just by virtue of all the traffic. However, this seems unlikely, because it is far too simple and straightforward. Also wouldn’t justify a great long ramble about the superiority of my local driving culture, so I can’t bear for it to be true.
However I suspect there are less road accidents there per capita than here in Australia since everybody there has to pay attention and is patient with other drivers. Australian drivers either tune out or are too aggressive (road rage) and cause more accidents.
Sydney has this weird thing where cars drive full speed to red lights and break at the last minute which is pretty frightening when crossing.
I have driven tens of thousands of kilometres in the US on roadtrips, and the driving there is quite insane - speeding and dangerous, aggressive manoeuvres. Doing 10-20km over the limit is standard and anyone sticking to the limit is the outlier.
There is no point debating on US car stats, we are the best and worst at everything car related.
If people are driving fewer miles in Japan that means that the built environment is better.
Is there higher usage of mass transit, cycling, and walking in Japan? You bet there is.
And don't give me that "America is oh so big and spread out, Japan is on an island" nonsense. 80%+ of Americans live in urban areas. It once had the largest passenger rail network in the world. This is a matter of intentional city planning and deliberate choices. Not every island nation is as transit-oriented as Japan (just look at the Carribbean or even the UK).
When divided highways were first being introduced globally, Japan's government made an intentional choice to invest in the Shinkansen instead of roadways. That was not an inevitability as there were voices there that preferred road investment.
- Stopping in the middle of the road whenever they feel like it. Just turn on the blinkers and boom, the road became a parking slot! And they don't care if it is a straight segment or the middle of a curve.
- Overtaking other cars on the left at an intersection. I don't know here, but in my home country that is illegal, because it is very dangerous. I have seen many near misses because of it.
- They don't turn on the lights as long as there is a tiny sliver of light in the sky. Every day I see people driving with the lights off after sunset, or during heavy rain or snow! Seriously, who drives with the lights off during a fucking blizzard with less than 10 meters of visibility?!?
Taxis and occasionally even limousine buses are notoriously guilty of this...
Sure, better than falling asleep and crashing, but come on, all the konbinis around here have parking slots big enough for trucks.
For example, in my romanian road code you are not permitted to turn right at a red light unless there is a separate green blinking arrow pointing that way (and no, the blinking green isn't always there). I know that in the US the default is you can turn.
How about stopping on the side of the road? Here it's permitted anywhere it's not explicitly forbidden. And I think taxis have an exception and they can really stop anywhere for a few moments to pick up/drop people. They may get cursed at but it's legal.
Here's a little mind twister:
In the US there are Right Arrow signals. A Red signal indicates you can turn right if it's safe just like ordinary Red signals. A Green signal indicates you can turn right, obviously.
Wait, what?
You see, this Right Arrow signal exists alongside ordinary signals at an intersection. Specifically when the ordinary signals are Green (so you can go straight ahead or turn as appropriate) but the Right Arrow signal is Red, you cannot turn right. Usually this is because someone is crossing the intersection and you would risk running them over.
This specific arrangement is very rare.
Never saw single red lights. Just the blinking green when it's permitted. Btw blinking green implies yield to other cars, pedestrians or anything else that's in your way.
This is NOT at all my experience here in Tokyo. Drivers are generally very careful around crosswalks, and for good reason: if a driver hits a pedestrian (or cyclist), it's automatically the driver's fault, with almost no exceptions.
The only really bad drivers I normally see here are some taxi drivers, driving too fast on narrow streets in the city. Everyone else is generally careful.
But don't forget: here in Tokyo, most drivers are professionals (delivery trucks or taxis usually), not private individuals. Your experience in more rural or car-centric parts of Japan are likely to be very different.
The thing is, you get used to it. Living in an eastern european country that hasn't caught up on infrastructure, I'm used to driving on narrow winding roads.
What happened when I first drove a couple hundred km on a freeway[1]? I had to ask everyone else in the car to keep me talking because I was literally falling asleep.
[1] Or whatever the US term is for the roads with at least 2 lanes, directions separated by a fence and grade separated intersections.
There's plenty of shit drivers there as everywhere but the physical environment (not the least of which street parking not being a thing) enables people to exist a lot more safely and conveniently outside of a car than in the US and the data bears that out. Eg narrow roads improves safety for motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists alike.
Bullshit. Almost 6 years in Aomori, and rare is the month that I don't see a car crashed on the side of the road, even on sunny summer days. Meanwhile in my home region (Extremadura, Spain, also a rural region) I could go years without seeing a single crash. I am sure that the design and maintenance of the roads has something to do with it.
A very common theme when talking to people in the US is "this neighborhood used to have so many more kids out and about!" Even in the neighborhood I grew up in, where my parents still live, there are far fewer kids around, even though the neighborhood's design and car traffic haven't changed at all.
Where are they? Are their parents driving them from place to place? Are they staying inside staring at screens? Or are there simply fewer kids due to falling birthrates?
I mean it's better here than where I grew up (California) but I still wouldn't call it "good".
This is where opportunistic roving tow trucks start to sound like a good idea.
With trolleys, it'd be even better if the tracks themselves had some kind of AI technology to detect parked cars and call the tow truck to remove the car before it causes a delay.
That's how it's like in the suburbs. There are very few cars, and kids can play and bike on the roads, and go anywhere on their bikes.
It's only urban areas that are very car centric and kids can't do that, although they can go on the subway or a bus. The suburbs are much nicer and safer for kids.
Sad stuff, the collapse of the public realm. Compound living is the only thing we can manage still.
The discussion is about suburbs, so by definition it is away from the city core.
Here in our (US, California) suburb it is wonderfully walkable for kids and adults alike. For kids, there is very little traffic since only local neighborhood traffic is present unlike in cities. There are bike/walk trails around and across. Multiple playgrounds, sports fields, all connected by bike trails. Stores, restaurants, school, assorted services, theaters, all within a ~10 minute walk radius. This is what suburb means to me.
Where are these magical subdivisions with city-like access to amenities?
If you are really interested in this type of living, look for newer master planned communities in the south. They are immensely popular and aforadable compared to coastal cities.
There’s decent choice when house shopping, at least the places I’ve lived. If someone chooses a suburb surrounded by 2 miles of other suburbs, that’s their choice. There’s plenty of “old city” suburbs (what used to be the edge of town 25 years or 50 years back) that now have sidewalks and stuff nearby. HN trends wealthy though, so I imagine many people only look at housing on the current city edges.
When I got older and rode my bike everywhere there was not a SINGLE bike lane anywhere in my entire town, and the sidewalks were disused and crappy.
And yet: we were outside playing CONSTANTLY.
But now there is so much more everywhere I look. Skateparks everywhere, kid friendly pools and parks. More bike friendly roads. My daughter is still too young now but it seems like the outdoor resources are better than ever.
Must be light trucks! What a fine example of Occam’s butterknife at work.
Of course I went to the houses of my friends by foot/bike after school. Unsurprisingly there were roads with cars everywhere, which do exist here in Europe. Blaming "road centric infrastructure" is delusional, road centric infrastructure has been the norm for at least 60 years and if that were the cause you would have noticed a degradation then and no degradation after. Clearly not the case.
I find it quite offensive to suggest that "European cities" are somehow this extremely car unfriendly place. We Europeans like cars as well, we like to drive them a lot and like to live in places with good car connections. Places like Germany, where I live, also have very good car infrastructure. Outside of large cities cars are the only way to get around as other modes of transportation are very unreliable and not serviced often. None of this has prevented me from going outside with my friends or biking to school alone.
If I had to guess why kids are playing less outside than they used to, maybe it is because the park we hung out is now inhibited by drug dealers. Or because of the girl who got raped there.
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/05/19/a-crosswalk-too-far-v...
"In the Boston suburb of Burlington, Massachusetts, the AMC movie theater is right across the street from the Burlington Mall. But if you're planning to travel between these two destinations on foot, you're in for quite a hike. The closest crosswalk is more than half a mile down the Middlesex Turnpike. That means crossing the road -- if you're going to do it 'the safe way' -- requires a 1.2-mile journey, and it's definitely not going to be a pleasant one. Local resident David Chase reports that only one side of the street has a sidewalk."
Seriously, what a dumb example. The problem has already been solved. My city is full of cars, but there are also enough traffic lights triggered by pedestrian s, hardly a miracle of modern engineering.
The people living there?
> The problem has already been solved.
Yes, that's why the poster said "in the US they would be roadkill". It's very much a solved problem; the US is notable for not implementing the solutions.
NYC was all ready to implement a congestion fee, with years of buildup and $15B in revenue scheduled for use... and the state governor nixed the entire at the eleventh hour by fiat, because out-of-NYC voters who shouldn't have a say don't like the concept.
If local governments fail at basic duties missing traffic lights are not the thing you should be worrying about.
There is no need to move them if you create the spaces, like courtyards, gardens and backyards.