Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them • Hacker News Board

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#251

Post by sethammons » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 12:50 PM UTC

sampo wrote: post #175

souprock wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'm an American. I might feel differently if I were Japanese. Here, children are driven to school by their parents. When school ends, the parents are there waiting in their cars. Kids mostly don't even play outside anymore. Those of you thinking public transport is fine are likely at least a little bit physically imposing and/or you are in relatively fancy locations.

> Here, children are driven to school by their parents. When school ends, the parents are there waiting in their cars. Do parents get out of their work in the middle of the afternoon to drive their kids from school to home? Do they go back to work for the last couple hours after that? Or do kids have 8-hour schooldays?

Luckily my wife only works a few hours a week, so she was able to pick up our kids from school (before we opted for homeschooling). For my brother and his wife, they both work full-time. They can get some help from Grandma, some help from friends who have a stay at home mom, and some help from us. On days where none of that lines up, either he or his wife have to leave work, take kids home, and usually go back to the office. There is no public transportation available here and they removed school buses maybe 10 years ago as a cost cutting measure. When I was a kid, the school bus worked fantastic. It is crazy they don't run them anymore.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#252

Post by fulafel » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 1:02 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #124

jonathanyc wrote: post #86

I think this is an awful situation, but at what point do we call seniors’ desires unreasonable? Is their want to stay in their suburban homes which are designed for cars really something the state should be concerned about when the working poor struggle to afford the subway?[1] I think we should make relocation easy for the elderly who aren’t able to get around. I think it is terrible if they can’t move from their ho…

France have a peculiarly Gallic compromise - the light quadricycle. It's a class of vehicle weighing less than 425kg (~940lbs) with a top speed of no more than 28mph. Anyone aged over 14 can drive a light quadricycle without a license. They're a fixture of everyday life in rural France, providing independent transport for teenagers, the elderly and habitual drink-drivers. They're deathtraps for the driver, but their…

That's an EU-wide type of quadricycle - the vehicle category is called L6e or L7e. It's a good regulatory slot for light EVs too and they're sold in many countries, though you need a driver's license usually.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#253

Post by Retric » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 1:04 PM UTC

emj wrote: post #240

rimliu wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Otoh, drivets are also the ones taking the traffic regulations most seriously. Pedestrians are inclined to jaywalk, and that’s pretty much it, but don’t get me started on bicycles…

Your comment is anecdata, basing these kinds of statements on personal experiences is not a good idea, the truth is we break the rules with the same frequency what ever mode of transport the use. Furthermore in the statistics for accidents in Sweden serious injuries drivers vs. pedestrian/bicyclist you can see that in ~80% of the cases it was caused by drivers.

Bikes are slower so you would expect them to cause even fewer accidents. 20% may not seem like it, but it suggests bikes riders are much worse at following the rules of the road than drivers.

In practice you actually see this with bike riders regularly ignoring red lights ect.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#254

Post by katzgrau » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 1:24 PM UTC

virmundi wrote: post #114

dundercoder wrote: post #101

I’m 36, live in the suburbs, and in recent years have gone (legally) blind from Retinitis Pigmentosa. Voluntarily giving up my license was one of the hardest and most important decisions I’ve made. There is literally 0 public transportation here. Not even Uber or Lyft have come around. America’s sprawl and dependence on cars is incredible. It wasn’t until I spent time in London, Oxford, and Paris that I could recogni…

Out of curiosity, why give up your license? It's a great ID. You don't have to use it. I know plenty of people with licenses to carry concealed, but don't. To you point about car dependence, not using one is humiliating, at least for me. I live about .25 miles from my office. I walk daily to and from (twice). I feel, and have seen, people look at me like I'm poor. It is a foreign concept to many that walking or bikin…

I walk pretty much everywhere within a two mile range if I have the time. It's a bit meditative and I can also get a little exercise (if you could call it that) in.

According to WaPo, 70% of Americans are overweight or obese, so I don't think that, statistically, many people are really in a place to look down on you for walking.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#255

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 1:24 PM UTC

>> More than anything else, self-driving cars could revolutionize seniors' transportation options.

But the problem is created by the over-reliance on cars in the first place, and the fact that cities are planned for cars rather than humans. Self-driving cars aren't a solution, when the problem is too many cars.

A real solution would be some kind of pulbic transport that's as convenient and as efficient as privately owned automobiles, but somehow we're much more interested in trying to solve the much harder problem of vehicle autonomy.

For the record, I live in a town in the South of London, on the East coast. From the first moment I moved here I was amazed at the number of people with mobility issues -disabled folks, seniors, parents with prams etc- taking the bus for shor hops around town. I understand it's very different in the US, where owning a car is a very big deal, but it doesn't have to be that way. Choices made in the past dictate the current situation; choices that can be undone.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#256

Post by emj » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 1:28 PM UTC

evandijk70 wrote: post #234

daemin wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I lived in Sydney I found that my car was sitting idle for the majority of the time. I did the sums and even with free parking at my apartment, it would have been cheaper for me to just rent a car for the days that I needed it (like a weekend trip, a shopping trip to the suburbs/ikea, etc) than to own it outright. I had coworkers that did that any it was fine. If you look at it financially, you owning a car is t…

If owning a car and renting a car occasionally were exactly the same price, I'd still prefer to own a car. Picking up and doing the paperwork for a car is a big hassle, and takes away a large part of the convenience of owning a car.

It's only a problem until you do it. If you are a regular customer the paper work is easy both for you mentally and for the provider of the rental car, and if you join a car pool you just check where there is a car free and go there to pick it up. I usually parked my cargo bicycle beside the carpool for easy transport home.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#257

Post by danielbarla » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 1:30 PM UTC

dundercoder wrote: post #188

poulsbohemian wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you dundercoder for sharing your experiences, would be very interested in the adaptations you made to your working environment as your eyesight failed. It also got me thinking about my own locale, and I would agree with volkl48. I live in Walla Walla, WA now, which has three colleges and a very walkable downtown. Sounds like you have kids, and we have reasonable public schools. It's a 45 minute flight to Seattl…

I still have some central vision, maybe 20 degrees field of view, so I can still see my laptop screen ok. I had to ditch my two 27” monitors because I’d get vertigo looking between them (usually hunting for the mouse pointer) I crank up the text size so large my neighbors can read it, but not so big that it exceeds my visual field. I use a screen reader to read docs. I’m super excited about the new AI powered narrato…

Regarding the new AI powered narrators, do you have any recommendations already?

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#258

Post by emj » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 1:34 PM UTC

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #201

Cd00d wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's extreme. I have a car in NYC. The subway system here is amazing, while also being an embarrassment. But, the car provides the freedom to visit friends and family for a day or weekend. The cost is $200 per month parking and $150 per month insurance, plus the cost of the car, which is relatively low as we drive less than 500 miles per month. We can visit family in 45 minutes or 2 hours (depending on destination)…

Out of curiosity, where in NYC is this? Because I live in Melbourne, Australia, and $200 USD per month is literally what someone pays me and the spousal unit for our car space after conversion from AUD to USD, and I'm not in the CBD, and I'm assuming (i think correctly) car parking is far cheaper here than in new york city...

I've heard people pay $200-$400 for parking in Brooklyn and Glendale, also ten times that on Manhattan.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#259

Post by TomK32 » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 1:35 PM UTC

revelation wrote: post #58

That's because prior to being too old to drive, they didn't give a fuck about the public transportation system. Actually, even after being too old to drive, they happily continue to vote against public transportation. It's bizarre to suggest our transportation system is failing them. It's exactly the transportation system they voted for, the transportation system a good bunch of them built, designed, railroaded throu…

I totally agree with you.

Re: Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them

#260

Post by ekianjo » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 1:37 PM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #244

rimliu wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Otoh, drivets are also the ones taking the traffic regulations most seriously. Pedestrians are inclined to jaywalk, and that’s pretty much it, but don’t get me started on bicycles…

Pedestrians and cyclists generally don't present a serious safety hazard to others. This is like complaining that people treat guns and knives with different levels of seriousness. Of course they do; both are potentially deadly, but one far more so than the other.

> cyclists generally don't present a serious safety hazard to others.

If they behave dangerously and put themselves at risk of being hit, even if they are the one taking the risk, the car driver will always be at fault, no matter what. And yes, like some others have echoed in comments here, many bike riders do not stop at red lights. I see that every - single - day, multiple times.