331–340 of 443 posts
[1] https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/murder-machines/
[2] https://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com/2014/03/bsnyc-no-friday-fun...
Can HN please stop it with this "not owning a car is virtuous" shtick? I went most of my younger life not having a car, only learning to drive at age 28. I lived in a new england suburb close enough to go to my work and shopping services at a ten minute walk at the time, and it still was horrid. People here don't get how limited your life is without a car. You are limited to a ten-fifteen mile radius for everything,…
I would be surprised to learn someone over the age of 16 doesn't have their license in a new england suburb. In my limited experience public transit is terrible in smaller US cities.
The truth is in NYC I don't even think about owning a car. In fact the opposite is true, sometimes I think to myself "wow, I'm so glad I can live my life and don't have to worry about all that car related stuff."
I'm not saying that's true anywhere else. I'm not telling you to feel guilty about owning a car. All I'm saying is that in NYC in 2018, no, life really isn't limited without a car. This isn't virtue signaling this is a calculated part of life for many people living in major cities. Public transit isn't perfect but the cost/benefit of car ownership overhead just isn't worth it in some places.
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I cannot imagine mandatory tracking devices, anonymous or not, ever being mandatory in the United States. That would never fly.
Everybody misinterpreted what I've intended. SHORT RANGE BEACONS. Enough to be "seen" by car AI through obstacles. Here's the imaginary conversation between car and beacon: - "Is someone behind that parked van?" - "Yes" - "Who?" - "Mind your own business, just slow down in case I decide to jump to the road, ok?"
Can HN please stop it with this "not owning a car is virtuous" shtick? I went most of my younger life not having a car, only learning to drive at age 28. I lived in a new england suburb close enough to go to my work and shopping services at a ten minute walk at the time, and it still was horrid. People here don't get how limited your life is without a car. You are limited to a ten-fifteen mile radius for everything,…
This is highly dependent on your location and life circumstances. I live in Eastern Europe, have resources to easily buy a couple of cars, yet choose not to. I prefer to walk or cycle.
> People talk about bicycles, but 0 degree or snowy weather makes that horrid
In Amsterdam, people cycle in -10°C when there's 10cm of snow on the ground (I did so myself). While a little unpleasant, apart from walking it was the only viable means of transport: the metro and trains were cancelled because of snow, and cars and buses were mostly stuck in traffic jams because there were so many crashes everywhere. (Someone tell the Dutch about winter tires!)
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We could end up with roads dedicated to cars being separated from roads dedicated to pedestrians or cyclists. You could imagine if a city was designed from scratch the vehicles could move around almost in tunnel-like back-alleys, with periodic embarkation points into pedestrianized open plazas and boulevards. If Musk's reduction in cost of tunnelling is more than just a pipe-dream, then you might be able to retrofit…
> vehicles could move around almost in tunnel-like back-alleys, with periodic embarkation points into pedestrianized open plazas and boulevards. Sounds an awful lot like a subway or lite rail system to me. I've never understood the fascination with self-driving cars and what they imply for PT--how is such a system superior to a well designed and maintained train system?
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As a frequent pedestrian who also pays road taxes, I am also trying to get somewhere, and I don't appreciate all the times I've had to dodge cars while using a crosswalk. The stakes for me are much higher.
Apart from the dodging, it's having to stand there waiting, while they womble past in their horseless carriage ... getting in my way.
There is a person in that car, so as far as who is more important it's equal both ways.
Sometimes the person walking waits, sometimes the person in the car waits.
Now is an opportunity, perhaps first in ~100 years, perhaps last, to recover the streets for unaugmented humans: slow down cars in urban areas, increase qualifications for humans to drive, eventually ban human drivers entirely, leaving only automated vehicles with enough sensors and going slowly enough to reduce auto-related deaths for pedestrians and passengers alike to zero.
And until ALL the human drivers are gone, automated ones are going to have to drive 'on eggshells' in case an uninstrumented car happens by. IF it were known for a fact that all cars were instrumented (so the software knew where ALL of them were) then we could even do away with stop lights etc - the cars could regulate intersections 'in the cloud'. And so on.
Which leaves the interesting problem - what do we do to cross the chasm - from all human drivers to all automated drivers? There are few good solutions in the middle.
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Counter point. Late 30s here, family, no car, no license. I use cabs all the time, it's great. I have a fine social life and can drink safely. I can rent houses and move about for work, then change countries without offloading assets at fire-sale prices. I choose not to live in an unpleasant climate, so snow is a non-issue for me. Have you considered the option that maybe you just don't get it? Cars are responsible f…
I agree that not owning a car would be better than owning. But simply saying "you should move to a better place" is not only a privileged statement but also a callous one. You assume people are not in a place for important reasons like staying close to family, working for a company they like, simply loving where they live or not being able to afford living to an urban environment. These are all valid and if not ownin…
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di... and order by 'emission per capita'.
Point taken. However, when new tech comes along, new laws follow in their wake. When people moved from farm to city and suddenly we had massive amounts of worker abuse, labor laws got introduced. Barnstorming aviation gave way to regulated aviation. It's not exactly the same, but it's similar in that it's a reaction to change in the operating environment. I mean, before cars, streets tended to be narrow and generally…
> I mean, before cars, streets tended to be narrow and generally ad hoc. It's also worthwhile to consider all that cars have added to our society. People stayed in the streets because that's as far as they could go. Vendors came to the streets because that's where their customers could get to. Travel was limited, the movement of goods was basically nonexistent compared to today and "moving for a job" was not even a p…
Luckily, there are other societies that have managed to achieve most of the benefits of cars with fewer of the costs. We can learn from them as we try to find a balance that is acceptable to a broader population.
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It's already true in many places, in a lot of European cities you see a sign like this when entering: https://lsmlomza.pl/pliki/2014/03/lsm-znak1.jpg And it basically means that pedestrians have an absolute priority before cars, they can walk on the street as much as they like and you as a driver have to exhibit some extreme attention because if anything happens, it's 99% certain you will be found at fault.
Is that sign real? It is awful design. The meaning is complete obscure to me.
Incidentally it drove me crazy when I saw big red X's in circles upon moving to a place with European signage. It always felt wrong to proceed, when in fact the sign means don't stop. https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/50403/what-does-t...