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Comment by martiancookbook | Hacker News Reader

I grew up in Texas, only 1 mile away from my elementary school. I was dropped off every single day by car, and only ever used my bike to kill time within my "superblock" (not sure what to call it, but the streets which are blocked in by the 40mph arterial stroads.) I would have loved this!

Even when I went on to middle school (0.5 mile away), I was still dropped off by car. Thinking back, I'm not sure there were even bike racks, though there was of course a massive parking lot. Yikes, in retrospect.

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My daily trip to school in Canada involved walking a kilometre or two along a road with no sidewalk. When it snowed the road got narrower but it didn't slow traffic down, so it got very dangerous.

After a decade in Germany, I feel like a prisoner at my parents' house in Canada. It's literally impossible to walk to certain places without walking along fast traffic without a sidewalk. The traffic lights don't work for pedestrians. Nothing is reachable on foot anyway.

Living in Germany now, and just got back from visiting my wife's rural northern Canadian hometown and I totally agree with the feeling of being a prisoner in those places if you don't have a car.

The roads are so wide that you could land a plane on them, yet there's no sidewalks anywhere, or if there is a sidewalk, it's just a solitary sidewalk for a single block that doesn't connect to any other sidewalks.

You can either walk on peoples yards, or find yourself walking right between the gigantic pickup trucks parked on the side of the road and the gigantic pickup trucks zooming down the road as fast as they can and purposefully trying to make pedestrians scared.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a resort town in southern BC which had excellent biking and walking trails at least.

I lived really close to my elementary school, but since it is a country road people would be going double the speed limit not expecting bicycles. There was just no safe way to ride to school. :(

Georgia - also 1 mile from the school. I tried riding by bike with my daughter and the principal called and told me to never do it again as it was too unsafe. She claimed you were only allowed to go to school by car or bus, despite there being a sidewalk.

Meanwhile, I walked 1km to Kindergarten on my own with 51/2 in Germany.

What does 51/2 mean?

Maybe they meant 5.5 years old

I see a lot of European languages will say "I have X years" where English says "I am X years old". French at least

Specifying the unit for human age feels a bit formal in German. The unitless number is colloquially used like an adjective: "I am X".

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense in context.

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