Suburbs and diffuse urban centers connected by highways are a consequence of cars, not the other way around. The US could have instead opted for public transport and densely packed services so a full shopping trip doesn’t take you all the way around the state. Here in the UK I can just walk into town and all the things you need are an easy walk from each other,
Caused by minimum parking laws that we don’t need. We could fix the problem by building our cities the way we used to before GM bought all the trolleys, and scrapped them, to sell more cars.
I’m right there with you. I immigrated to the Netherlands and I no longer own a car (well I have a track car, but that’s different). I just bike or take the train everywhere.
People are always going to adjust their risk upwards as technology gets safer. Even if all cars were self-driving and perfect, some pedestrian will push the bounds of physics, stepping out with no time to stop.
These drivers aren’t going to sleep or Tiktoking in the first 30 minutes. They are being lulled into complacency by a tech that generally does a good job, and they have been told by marketing that we are so close to FSD.
I live in American suburbia and have far more miles on my bike than a car. And yes I have kids too. Yes the zoning sucks, but also Americans are just more lazy.
That is silly to say. Cars themselves are a convenience technology.
Are they? Maybe here in the EU they are, but growing up in American Suburbia, a car was a necessity.
I’m not going to go down your slippery slope of ever expanding scopes on convenience technology though.
Suburbs and diffuse urban centers connected by highways are a consequence of cars, not the other way around. The US could have instead opted for public transport and densely packed services so a full shopping trip doesn’t take you all the way around the state. Here in the UK I can just walk into town and all the things you need are an easy walk from each other,
In America walking from one store to another store 4 stores away could be an over half a mile long stroll.
Caused by minimum parking laws that we don’t need. We could fix the problem by building our cities the way we used to before GM bought all the trolleys, and scrapped them, to sell more cars.
I’m right there with you. I immigrated to the Netherlands and I no longer own a car (well I have a track car, but that’s different). I just bike or take the train everywhere.
People are always going to adjust their risk upwards as technology gets safer. Even if all cars were self-driving and perfect, some pedestrian will push the bounds of physics, stepping out with no time to stop.
These drivers aren’t going to sleep or Tiktoking in the first 30 minutes. They are being lulled into complacency by a tech that generally does a good job, and they have been told by marketing that we are so close to FSD.
Isn’t every technology a convenience technology?
We weren’t making fires or using levers to inconvenience ourselves.
If you don’t limit the scope of time, yeah, although I’d say yesterday’s convenience tech can become today’s necessary tech.
I don’t know, the more I think about “convenience technology”, the more I dislike the term.
I live in American suburbia and have far more miles on my bike than a car. And yes I have kids too. Yes the zoning sucks, but also Americans are just more lazy.
One of the fortunate American suburbanites, many are not so lucky. I now live in the Netherlands and either bike or take the train where I need to go.