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

#271

Post by ptaipale » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 2:20 PM UTC

emj wrote: post #235

ptaipale wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree with the antagonism, though my sample is of course very small. Coming from North Europe, where it's fairly natural to walk distances of a few hundred meters to do an errand, I and colleagues used to walk from a hotel in Rohnert Park to a Wal-mart on the other side of highway 101, whenever visiting the place and needing to do some shopping. And each time there were people driving by who would stop at us and a…

That's a different situation, you will also get questioning looks in Sweden when walking in the urban sprawl of upper middle class, but it's worse in the US. The OSM Surveyors Jacket came about in part because of a necessity, so it's really not only a US thing.

Really? I have walked in some Swedish upper middle class / sprawl areas, didn't notice any particular questioning looks, not to mention antagonism. Har inte gått i faktisk Solsidan dock.

The only area in Scandinavia where I met actual antagonism for walking was a neighbourhood in Århus; I lead a group of 12-year-old football players in a neat dual line through it by foot, and some "youth" started to throw little rocks at the boys. I guess they wanted to signal that it's their territory.

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

#272

Post by pjc50 » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 2:20 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #265

pjc50 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The town she's in recently made it illegal for residents of her park to drive their electric carts across the street to Publix or down the sidewalk to the doctor's office This right here is the problem - how? Why? Doesn't this violate disability discrimination law? I thought seniors were quite an effective voting bloc in cases like this?

They aren’t road legal and aren’t insured.

The UK exempts them from these requirements, so you'll occasionally see people driving them along the road. At 4mph. I'm not sure whether this is a good idea or not.

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

#273

Post by maxerickson » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 2:23 PM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #245

avs733 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, and several of my friends when I used to live in Phoenix, were big walkers. Its evening? go for a walk around the neighborhood. Walk to work, even though it was like 1.5 miles...just...walk. Each of us were stopped at least once by police for being suspicious...near as I can tell (we were all >middle class white people) all that was suspicious was us walking on sidewalks. Outside of the biggest cities America is a…

Even in big cities American urban design tends to strongly favor cars and ignore pedestrians. Here in Germany, any decent sized intersection will have pedestrian islands, often multiple islands just for a single side. In the states, these are relatively uncommon. Or look at where the stoplights are. In Germany, they're set back such that it's impossible for a driver to go into the crosswalk and still see the light. T…

Where you say "all", you are talking about roads and major streets.

The typical American street has a sidewalk set back from the street and light traffic (so the controls at the intersections barely matter).

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

#274

Post by trgn » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 2:38 PM UTC

echlebek wrote: post #125

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 generally agree, but "many centuries"? Come on. :)

ha, imho, it reads as a stylistic choice that fits the exasperated tone I think.

But there's a certain logic to that statement too. American cities always had very wide streets, 100 years before the car was invented even. In hindsight, it's hard to rationalize why really, but it seemed to have been because of this obsession for utility and practicality. Those very wide rigid grids were a transport-oriented design choice. To keep the horse shit away, so carts could make U-turns, so you could dump your bathwater in the middle.

The tragedy was that those wide streets were the seed for cars eventually destroying urban cores. When cars were invented, they had the space for them right there. A street that was used for everything (markets, recreation, horses, ...), suddenly became a 4-5 lane highway filled with loud, stinking, dangerous cars. Of course nobody wants to live next to that, it's genuinely awful. It set in motion a vicious cycle of people moving out of the cores and needing more parking-infrastructure to accommodate that commuting.

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

#275

Post by jschwartzi » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 2:40 PM UTC

austinjp wrote: post #191

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.

What a strange land. In the UK, I was using public transport and cycling to school by myself from the age of 16. I'm curious, are there large cities in the USA where this can happen? Are there any significant moves by politicians to wean North Americans off cars? Conversely, are there large cities in other countries that are similar to the US, where this does not happen? I'm going to suspect the Middle East, due to u…

I grew up in the suburbs and was walking to the bus stop by 8, and taking public transit to places by 15. It wasn't especially unsafe, although it would leave you stranded places after 6 in the afternoon.

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

#276

Post by ForRealsies » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 2:41 PM UTC

usrusr wrote: post #217

mikekchar wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Japan and actually live in rural enough area that there is no train. Well, there was a train until 1968 when the bus company convinced the fishermen that the reduced fish stocks were due to the train scaring away the fish (not over fishing, of course!). Now there are no fish and no train :-( Before I extol the virtues of the train system in Japan, there is one thing that you have to understand first. It is…

> For example, companies that get a monopoly will rip you off, but only by so much. Sounds like a rare victory of the good over its old nemesis, the perfect. I believe that a social environment that can pull this off will have a clear edge in many different ways, e.g. government can work so much better when it can be trusted that power abuse, if it happens, won't be excessive. Much better than pretend-saints who real…

Does empathy seem to thrive in smaller, homogeneous communities(ex. Japan, Nordic countries)?

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

#277

Post by jschwartzi » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 2:52 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #39

_m8fo wrote: post #8

I always get an inkling that buses (like Bolt/Mega/PeterPan) + the existing highway + roads are superior and more scalable than any other type of transportation, dollar for dollar. Why do people push for rail? Self-driving cars obviously can enhance this (the bus idea), but I suspect they will create even more traffic if we insist on having 5 passenger cars be 75% empty. Buses are great because demand can be realloca…

> Why do people push for rail? Because well-done High Speed Rail (HSR) is a blast over long distances. Certainly for city/metro areas a combination of light rail + buses as a web is the best option (light rail having the advantage of running emissions free), but the longer the distances are the better HSR is. The new ICE line Munich-Berlin with 4h one-way is so fast that it's actually threatening flight. Also, travel…

I can attest to how awesome rail is. I recently took the shinkansen from Tokyo station to Sendai in Japan, and it turned an 8-hour car trip into a two hour train ride.

The seats were as large as business-class airplane seats.

It would likely have taken much longer by bus because of all the stops and transfers.

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

#278

Post by watwut » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 2:53 PM UTC

sethammons wrote: post #250

watwut wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for good reasons.

Good reasons such as? I think the rise of the dual income household is a major contributor to many problems. This is not to say that woman in the workplace is bad, I think a diverse workforce is a good thing. But the dual income family has lessened parent-child interaction and raised the average household income which I think raises general prices for just about everything, but especially housing. This makes it harde…

I am women. It would have to be me who would have to stay.

And I did stayed some time while the kids were small and disliked that a lot. You get used to depression as a normal state, basically.

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

#279

Post by Clubber » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 2:54 PM UTC

austinjp wrote: post #191

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.

What a strange land. In the UK, I was using public transport and cycling to school by myself from the age of 16. I'm curious, are there large cities in the USA where this can happen? Are there any significant moves by politicians to wean North Americans off cars? Conversely, are there large cities in other countries that are similar to the US, where this does not happen? I'm going to suspect the Middle East, due to u…

It's because our news is completely unregulated and local news always spotlights and aggrandizes crimes and whatnot, so that the population is terrified of itself constantly.

Obviously if people took the time to look at the crime statistics, the chances of being a victim of a crime is less than half of what it was when I walked a mile to elementary school every day.

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

#280

Post by fouc » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 3:12 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…

Try cranking the speed up on the synthesized speech. There are blind listeners that listen to synthesized speech at much higher rates, 600-800 wpm and up. If you crank up the speed a bit, it would probably help differentiate between normal speech where you have greater expectations on how it should sound, and something that's almost a different language.