Welcome to the Era of the $20k Family Car Insurance Bill • Hacker News Board

Re: Welcome to the Era of the $20k Family Car Insurance Bill

#111

Post by erik_seaberg » Tue, Oct 22, 2024, 7:16 PM UTC

consteval wrote: post #110

erik_seaberg wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Transport to where-ever you need to go, an what-ever time you need to go there" has to functionally be pretty car-like. My question is how he wants to dispatch it on demand so it doesn't need to stay parked near us.

Buses and trams do that as well, or at least extremely close to it. If the next bus is in a minute, and it's going to the block you're going to, guess what - you can go where you want, whatever time you want. This is the case in many areas. When I was in Romania, between buses, trams, and rail I could go wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted. There was always an option available, typically multiple overlapping options…

From Fremont, CA, the Sunnyvale office is a 40-minute wait for a 16-minute bus to a 12-minute wait for a 14-minute train to a 14-minute wait for a 48-minute bus (making 34 stops). Google estimates I could get there in two and a half hours. Getting home after 11 PM is more like four hours.

It's only 22 miles. A replacement for a car should be able to do this in about 32 minutes. But it would have to go point-to-point on demand, they can't cover the spanning tree of n^2 possible trips with any reasonable frequency (mostly because n^2 taxpayers don't exist, nor housing for them).

Re: Welcome to the Era of the $20k Family Car Insurance Bill

#112

Post by thayne » Tue, Oct 22, 2024, 7:41 PM UTC

consteval wrote: post #98

thayne wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't really matter if you disincentivise it if there isn't an alternative, or the alternatives are even worse, as is currently the case in many parts of the US.

I think the intention is that the disincentives will then create the opportunity for lower-cost transportation options, while simultaneously increasing advocacy in voters. Personal vehicles are expensive, and historically that cost is hidden from consumers. People were "conned" into believing it was the most economical transportation available personally.

But the subject of OP primarily hurts families with multiple children, but even if it somehow did cause enough advocacy and lobbying, creating better public transit would take decades, at which point the parents would no longer be paying for insurance for their children.

Re: Welcome to the Era of the $20k Family Car Insurance Bill

#113

Post by consteval » Tue, Oct 22, 2024, 8:25 PM UTC

erik_seaberg wrote: post #111

consteval wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buses and trams do that as well, or at least extremely close to it. If the next bus is in a minute, and it's going to the block you're going to, guess what - you can go where you want, whatever time you want. This is the case in many areas. When I was in Romania, between buses, trams, and rail I could go wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted. There was always an option available, typically multiple overlapping options…

From Fremont, CA, the Sunnyvale office is a 40-minute wait for a 16-minute bus to a 12-minute wait for a 14-minute train to a 14-minute wait for a 48-minute bus (making 34 stops). Google estimates I could get there in two and a half hours. Getting home after 11 PM is more like four hours. It's only 22 miles. A replacement for a car should be able to do this in about 32 minutes. But it would have to go point-to-point…

Right because the US is car-centric, so everything is designed to be an inefficient as possible. Things are far away not in spite of cars, but because of them.

> A replacement for a car should be able to do this in about 32 minutes

Right, again, I was able to go across the capital of Romania in maybe 10 minutes end-to-end. Because Bucharest isn't car centric. And I'm able to reach any arbitrary point in the city trivially.

Also, as a side note, your car couldn't do that in 32 minutes. There're people in CA that commute MUCH LESS than 22 miles that spend 1.5+ hours in traffic a day. Because, again, cars are the most inefficient means of transportation imaginable, so they have awful throughput and bandwidth.

This is mostly a case of US car brain. There're countless examples of places all over the world that are able to achieve this, and more, without a car. The biggest factor to remember is that distance doesn't scale like you think it does - due to the extreme inefficiency of motor vehicle infrastructure, the majority of our space is wasted on not-useful things. 22 miles in the US isn't equivalent to 22 miles somewhere else, because somewhere else those 22 miles have 10x as much stuff, so you wouldn't need to travel 22 miles in the first place.

Re: Welcome to the Era of the $20k Family Car Insurance Bill

#114

Post by consteval » Tue, Oct 22, 2024, 8:28 PM UTC

thayne wrote: post #112

consteval wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the intention is that the disincentives will then create the opportunity for lower-cost transportation options, while simultaneously increasing advocacy in voters. Personal vehicles are expensive, and historically that cost is hidden from consumers. People were "conned" into believing it was the most economical transportation available personally.

But the subject of OP primarily hurts families with multiple children, but even if it somehow did cause enough advocacy and lobbying, creating better public transit would take decades, at which point the parents would no longer be paying for insurance for their children.

The alternative is doing nothing and hurting people right now. The people who rely on public transportation most are poorer people. Something, eventually, has to be done because the path we're on is destructive. It's getting to the point where it's difficult to go just about anywhere. We're running out of space to put the roads.

Re: Welcome to the Era of the $20k Family Car Insurance Bill

#115

Post by erik_seaberg » Thu, Oct 24, 2024, 11:29 PM UTC

consteval wrote: post #113

erik_seaberg wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Fremont, CA, the Sunnyvale office is a 40-minute wait for a 16-minute bus to a 12-minute wait for a 14-minute train to a 14-minute wait for a 48-minute bus (making 34 stops). Google estimates I could get there in two and a half hours. Getting home after 11 PM is more like four hours. It's only 22 miles. A replacement for a car should be able to do this in about 32 minutes. But it would have to go point-to-point…

Right because the US is car-centric, so everything is designed to be an inefficient as possible. Things are far away not in spite of cars, but because of them. > A replacement for a car should be able to do this in about 32 minutes Right, again, I was able to go across the capital of Romania in maybe 10 minutes end-to-end. Because Bucharest isn't car centric. And I'm able to reach any arbitrary point in the city triv…

That system doesn't seem to take you to every Bucharest address in ten minutes, only popular ones. I picked a few buildings at random in Google Maps and got hour-long L-shaped trips (detours into downtown) that would have been fifteen-minute drives. I don't think any pre-scheduled routes can cover n^2 trips well.

Re: Welcome to the Era of the $20k Family Car Insurance Bill

#116

Post by consteval » Fri, Oct 25, 2024, 3:36 PM UTC

erik_seaberg wrote: post #115

consteval wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right because the US is car-centric, so everything is designed to be an inefficient as possible. Things are far away not in spite of cars, but because of them. > A replacement for a car should be able to do this in about 32 minutes Right, again, I was able to go across the capital of Romania in maybe 10 minutes end-to-end. Because Bucharest isn't car centric. And I'm able to reach any arbitrary point in the city triv…

That system doesn't seem to take you to every Bucharest address in ten minutes, only popular ones. I picked a few buildings at random in Google Maps and got hour-long L-shaped trips (detours into downtown) that would have been fifteen-minute drives. I don't think any pre-scheduled routes can cover n^2 trips well.

This wasn't my experience when you cross-reference the systems (bus, tram, metro) and consider walking also works.

> would have been fifteen-minute drives

Yes, if everyone on Earth magically disappeared. If you've never driven in a dense city, it's often faster to just walk alongside the cars than be in the cars.

This is because, again, cars are so unbelievably space inefficient that the space saving of human people versus cars can make up for the multiple order of magnitude difference in speed.