There is no better way for a real 'murrican to get from point A to point B than in the driver’s seat of your brand new F150…
…except literally 1000s of other means of transport including skipping, pogo-sticking, slithering like a snake, railroad handcar, ultralight, rollerskating, skateboarding, push scooter, teleportation, hot air balloon, powerwheelz, electric unicycle, trolly bar, walking etc. etc. etc.
For me personally, I have to say bikes and on foot. Even in the colder months, a 15 miler feels great!
High speed rail. It’s phenomenal. Want to go somewhere far away? Without HSR you’re doing an exhausting drive, a day-long ride in slow trains, going through horrible airports and paying for taxis on both ends. With HSR you go directly between city centres stress free and arrive with plenty of spoons to walk around. It’s a game changer.
Feet. I was always at odds with bikes and cars, because I always disliked being tied to a piece of metal. Trains, trams and buses are cool shortcuts, if they’re available. But at the end of the day, feet are the real MVP. They’re just always there, always waiting to chauffeur me to my next destination, and they’ll carry me all the way, even into houses, right to my seat.
many places will ticket for riding bikes on sidewalks (if there are even sidewalks existing), and many people have no choice but to ride on the road for many routes because no alternative exists
Sidewalks where I live are bumpy, interrupted by trees, signposts and trash bins and occupied by pedestrians. Much better (and ultimately safer) is to cycle in the middle of the lane to force cars to give you space. You are also more visible that way to cars from sidelanes.
Bike for sure, as I was still at school I did 100+km /week. I guess it stuck. Second is probably kayaking although it is seldomly actually useful transport. Then walking, and after that all manner of trains, then cars, then busses, and last planes. But honestly I just like being in transport to some extend so unless I’m dreading my destination I like them all.
Nothing beats walking to me. I wish I could walk everywhere but stupid lack of endless time. In general I enjoy travel more that is slow but consistently moving. So train over bus and I just hate planes because sure the plane is fast but most of your journey your just sitting there or in lines. but yeah it would be walk then bike then metro train then other train. Plane and bus are pretty unappealing to me so not sure where to put either. At that point I might actually prefer a car, which I know is verbotem. Actually busses are not to bad if the jaunt is short enough but really then I might as well bike anyway.
Safety on the road has been improved so far by having public orgs and governments pressuring companies with regulations. Without them there would be no seatbelts and dashboards might still be dotted with stylish pointy metal spikes.
Unfortunately safety regulations have solely focused on the occupants of the concerned vehicle. It follows that any feature that protects the occupant at the expense of everyone else is still measured as a net positive. Ultimately this is leading to an arms race.
Vehicle safety needs to expand to the other side of the windshield.
Vehicle safety needs to expand to the other side of the windshield.
I would take it further and day that regulations should prioritize the safety of the people outside the vehicle over the people inside, for the simple reason that the people buying the vehicle already have a strong incentive to maximize their own safety, while they currently have zero concerns about the safety of pedestrians.
Pedestrians, on the other hand, don’t have the freedom to choose which vehicle runs them over, so it is up to regulations to advocate for them because nobody else will.
I’ve legit heard people say things along the lines of “The largest SUV or trucks are safer for Americans because it can hold up better in a collision with deer which we have a lot of.” (Because apparently large wildlife aren’t common anywhere at all in the rest of the world.)
They have a point though, and they’ll hold up especially well against a specific, extremely common subspecies of deer called “humans.”
Whatever is most pleasant/convenient for the trip I’m trying to make, as long as it is not a car, because cars are disproportionately noisy, polluting and a danger to my neighbors, and I don’t want to contribute to that.
If all the options were equally available and convenient, then for me walking > cycling > streetcar > train > bus.
That order is almost the same for me but move bike way down. Having to own and maintain a piece of equipment to get around introduces a lot of the same problems as cars, just on a smaller scale. IMO getting around should be something the built environment facilitates without the individual needing to BYO vehicle
Riding a bike doesn’t necessarily mean owning a bike.
Places like Toronto or London have bicycle sharing programs where for a small monthly fee you can go to one of many stations around the city, pick a bike and leave it at any of the stations near to your destination. The maintenance staff ensures that all stations have some bikes available and that the bikes remain in working condition.
Bike and it’s not close. I’ve loved being on my bike my whole life, ever since it was the easiest way to get to the public library as a youth. My hometown had a beloved, beautiful, and very extensive bike trail system, and in addition to my use of it for transit, my family would ride it together for fun every Sunday. At peak usage as an adult rider, my daily commute was ~27 miles. Currently it’s 9, but I do a lot of errands and shopping and recreational riding as well.
So I’m a bit torn on this one… your taxes pay for firefighters and police. However you have to have insurance in emergencies should your house burn down and you want to rebuild, or should something (like your car) get stolen. In all cases, you’re paying to support the infrastructure that provides you a safety net.
Without getting into the social economics of what in this world should actually be free, not paying for this seems to fall outside of that as the person refused to pay for the safety net until it was needed. That’s like trying to go to an insurance company after an accident to get coverage for that accident.
Yeah this is exactly like the time Verizon refused to connect the firefighters in the middle of a wildfire because they had “used too many minutes” or something stupid like that. Megacorps need to be held accountable for emergency situations that don’t fit their neat little T&Cs.
I feel like this is a brainworm capitalist take. The capability was there, were their profits actually more important than locating a kidnapped child?
It’s not like this was going to drain a risk pool of equity and put other people’s coverage at risk; literally ping the fucking car and find out where it is. The capabilities are already there. Save the baby.
Emergency response and recovery has always been a problem of the commonwealth, not of individuals. Private insurance is and has always been a scam.
The cost of lives lost became conspicuous during the prison boom of the 1980s in which the Reagan—George H. W. Bush tough on crime policies literally more than decimated neighborhood populations. When police busted someone for possession, or loitering or contempt of cop (or was gunned down in spite) it wasn’t just an alleged thug removed from society, but also typically an employee, a parent, a renter, a consumer who bought food and paid bills. (The You’re Wrong About pod, amusingly on Dan Quayle vs. Murphy Brown gets into the 80s era conservative policies of broken window policing and harsh sentences for nonviolent petty crime)
So whenever someone’s life is demolished by a natural disaster, an untreated health problem, a vehicle collision, a rampage killing, police on a bender, whatever, it hits like a bomb in the community. Almost everyone has others who depend on them, as family, as a friend, as a customer or laborer. And when something makes them disappear, collateral crises manifest like shrapnel.
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