As an American who spent some time in Amsterdam this spring I cannot imagine trying to drive a vehicle anywhere near central.
I was blown away by how easy it was to get around.
From the states here. Our car engine blew up last week (2016 w/120K miles like wat).
I dont make the money, the husband (with help from his family) we got a 26 subie. I am the queen of beaters, I kinda hate it.
anyway,
driving it to my appointment yesterday, all I could think was we had to spend (borrow) $30K to get to work and the grocery. $30K to move around this fucking hell hole. We dont go on trips, vacations, or anything outside of at most 100 miles from home. I cant remember the last time I went 50 miles from home. $30K to go to work and to the shops. We hang on by a thread with the cost of living. Now we are fully car poor.
Look at these people riding. Im so jealous I could cry. The noise reduction alone is endearing.
Hopefully this blue wave will make things better for the working class. Hang in there, online stranger
I’m not the most social person, but wouldn’t it be nice to just leave your house and interact with your neighbors and recognize people on the street and shit?
Coincidentally, a high number of these weak social ties* is one of the best predictors of life satisfaction and good mental health. In contrast, there’s a strong correlation between longer car commutes and less life satisfaction and poorer mental health.
Huh, I knew both of these facts independently, and somehow never put them together side-by-side like this before.
* People that you see and lightly interact with regularly, though you don’t know them. Like the guy you see on the tram every day, for example.
Yeah, but its not the same in america. Closest grocery store to most people is about 5 to10 minutes away with a car… and the public transport is total shit. They built america for cars, thats the problem
They built america for cars, thats the problem.
Yeah, that is a problem. One that we can change if we want to. At least in urban, and to some extent suburban areas. It’s already happening all over the country.
Closest grocery store to most people is about 5 to10 minutes away with a car…
The problem is also people that keep thinking like this. 5 minutes away in a car usually means like what, 7 minutes on a bike, 20 minutes on foot?
Just don’t take the car. I know it sounds like a wild and hard to grasp idea to most Americans since we’re all trained to be car-brained since birth. We have to break that mindset.
Yah, that’s the thing foreigners don’t get. America is so fracking huge, there’s simply no space available to build food stores close to houses. /s
That sounds awful
Fewer dead people from people more concerned with their phone than maneuvering their two-ton death machine around. Gotta love it.
Having everyone ride bikes instead of cars, does not solve the phone issue. While less deadly, bike riders can still crash into you while looking at their phone and that is still a problem.
This is kind of like saying “the clumsiness issue still exists whether you’re carrying a bowling ball or a hand grenade with the pin removed. You could drop either and still get hurt!”
The two are so far apart that comparing them feels silly.
I stand corrected, if you can find me a single instance of live handgrenade bowling
The purpose of the analogy is to illustrate the fact that while the phone issue exists regardless of method of transportation, the method of transportation is the issue when combined with distraction.
Distracted walkers bumping into each other is much less of an issue than distracted drivers hitting others.
Not dying still sounds like a massive improvement to me.
Using a phone while riding a bike is overwhelmingly likely to injure the rider, and only the rider. Ask me how I know.
(Thankfully, it was one of the classic Nokia candy-bar phones, and it was unharmed.)
Riding while using a phone is way less common and very inconventient. Granted, it depends on the state of the road you are riding on.
I think in Amsterdam more people use a phone while cycling than do while driving. Either way both cause accidents, though the one without cars are much less deadly.
And US politicians only solution is to seize them because they’re “not safe” while they drive oversized pickup trucks.
