Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars • Hacker News Board

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#831

Post by Retric » Mon, Feb 20, 2023, 9:05 PM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #820

Retric wrote: post #816

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car travel is only “cheap” per trip because people have already sunk the costs into owning, insuring, and parking their car and paying for roads. Fuel taxes don’t even come close to paying for our road networks while rail is lumping all these costs together on a per trip basis.

It's still cheap compared to that. If you want an emergency services vehicles to get to your house you need a road anyway. If you want buses and coaches to function, you need roads. If you want to transport a bootload of stuff more than three times a year you're financially better off paying for a car than renting. If yor kids have school anywhere that isn't walking/cycling distance from your house, then you need a c…

A public road network for cars needs a great deal of infrastructure that a public network for busses and ambulances would. Literally every single street in NYC could be single lane, one way, without any street level parking if you’re not building for cars. Further, the demands of traffic directly relate to the kinds of roads, bridges etc you can get away with building and their cost to maintain.

You also have several objectively false statements here such as:

“If yor kids have school anywhere that isn't walking/cycling distance from your house, then you need a car, or two.” Except 100’s of millions of people currently live further than “cycling distance” from their kids school and don’t own a car.

Frankly cars didn’t exist until very recently and society was fine without them.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#832

Post by KingOfCoders » Tue, Feb 21, 2023, 5:32 AM UTC

rpastuszak wrote: post #653

iso1631 wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not at all true in the industrialized world. Gibraltar is maybe one place you might not need a car, it's a tiny country with a bus reaching everywhere. Yet there are 1444 cars per 1000 people. If you look at cars/1000 people though the US is top with 890 sure, but New Zealand, Canada, Finland, Austrailia, Poland, Italy are all above 750. France, Germany, UK, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, Japan are all above 600…

> _in most cases_ I'm in my mid 30s, lived in 5 different countries (incl. UK, Austria, Poland, Portugal) and use a car perhaps 4 times per month (cab, when I'm feeling lazy). Again, I put the emphasis there for a reason: I'm not saying that we don't need cars _at all_. What I'm saying is that we need _much fewer_ cars and there are many people like me. When I need to take a longer trip, I rent a cab. It costs me a f…

"Owning a car is a bit like watching TV vs. YT/VoD: it's partially driven by habits"

This.

Thank you, 50+, living in Germany, never owned a car (have a drivers license), never going to own a car.

When friends say "we need a car" they mean that they moved outside the city in a big house but want to go to the city every day and drive their children to a sports club every second day. Sure they "need a car". It's like I go diving and I "need an oxygen tank". Yes, sure, if you go diving.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#833

Post by oblio » Tue, Feb 21, 2023, 10:58 AM UTC

AceyMan wrote: post #730

usrusr wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is a "the grass is bleaker on the other side" situation. As a public transport person I feel weirdly constrained by the idea that a day's itinerary will inevitably have to see me return to wherever the car is parked, impossible to do spontaneous things like walk a few stops, ride with an acquaintance or something like that that would eventually take me home, but not return to some previous stage. With a car…

I am (well, was, pre-pandemic) the odd Los Angeles tech worker who used the bus & my bicycle for all my commuting, and many of my errand runs. I always enjoyed reminding my car-enslaved colleagues, "I never have to park the bus." People fail to notice for all the time (and distance) spent walking back to retrieve their car. It always felt like such a victory to hop on and off busses, taking care of four or five erran…

> I always enjoyed reminding my car-enslaved colleagues, "I never have to park the bus."

Clearly spoken as someone who's never played (defensive) football!

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#834

Post by oblio » Tue, Feb 21, 2023, 11:05 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #749

frosted-flakes wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> drive or cook a meal or rewire an electrical outlet or shoot a gun or splint a broken limb None of those except cooking are in any way "basic life skills". Least of all shooting a gun.

It's sad if you really believe that. Too many people in the tech industry have led such sheltered lives that they lack perspective on what happens in the real world. At a bare minimum every adult should know how to unload and render safe a firearm.

99.999% of people on this planet have lived fulfilling lives and died at peace in their bed without doing any of that.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#835

Post by vanilla_nut » Wed, Feb 22, 2023, 4:59 PM UTC

GiorgioG wrote: post #620

vanilla_nut wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those with licenses hate driving but do it (sparingly) through necessity. Those without licenses still had permits at some point, but found driving stressful enough that they never bothered to get a license.

Reading the above it seems like you're combining the dislike/stress of learning to be competent at something (driving) with the dislike for a particular activity (driving). Learning something isn't always fun, even if that something is something you may come to enjoy (or at least be indifferent about) once you gain a certain level of competency with it. If you never get past the learning discomfort it's hard to diffe…

Respectfully disagreed.

I've driven thousands of miles and hundreds or thousands of hours. In high school it was a requirement for living. But there's a big difference between being proficient and enjoying something. I got well past the "learning discomfort" and I still loathed driving. I choose to avoid driving every chance I can, even when it's cold, or rainy, or windy, or it'll take a long time to walk. Because I enjoy being outside and enjoying the world a lot more than being cooped up in a giant expensive metal box.

Some people just prefer walking, biking, and public transit over driving. You almost sound like you're describing Stockholm Syndrome, learning to "enjoy" a task that is stressful and unpleasant that you're forced to do every day.

I can't think of any activity I'm required to participate in by society that annoys me as much as driving everywhere.