Driving sucks. You have to have a license, insurance, and in many places inspections. You can’t or shouldn’t do it on meds, alcohol, or sleep deprived. You have buy and register a car. You have to fuel and maintain a car. A few seconds of distraction can completely ruin your life and someone else’s. It only takes one person making a mistake to clog up an MTA with millions of people for hours. One in a million will make mistake. You are more likely to have police interactions than almost any other activity. You can only go where roads are. License plate readers can track your movement.
I.e. you pay out the ass to do something stressful and dangerous that opens you up to life altering liability and you can’t safely do it if you are impaired in any way. Half of people in the US are all but forced to do this daily and often impaired. Not even negligently impaired, shift workers, emergency workers, parent of new borns are all forced to do this.
People are emotional creatures first, and sometimes exclusively. All those facts? Don’t matter. Cars are familiar.
I don’t know how to fix this. I mean, if you forced the issue and build walkability and other transit, then decades later these same emotional idiots would support that with as much fervor because it would be familiar.
Driving sucks. You have to have a license, insurance, and in many places inspections. You can’t or shouldn’t do it on meds, alcohol, or sleep deprived. You have buy and register a car. You have to fuel and maintain a car. A few seconds of distraction can completely ruin your life and someone else’s. It only takes one person making a mistake to clog up an MTA with millions of people for hours. One in a million will make mistake. You are more likely to have police interactions than almost any other activity. You can only go where roads are. License plate readers can track your movement.
I.e. you pay out the ass to do something stressful and dangerous that opens you up to life altering liability and you can’t safely do it if you are impaired in any way. Half of people in the US are all but forced to do this daily and often impaired. Not even negligently impaired, shift workers, emergency workers, parent of new borns are all forced to do this.
Car ownership serves our employers. It used to be that employers would build street cars and local rail.
People are emotional creatures first, and sometimes exclusively. All those facts? Don’t matter. Cars are familiar.
I don’t know how to fix this. I mean, if you forced the issue and build walkability and other transit, then decades later these same emotional idiots would support that with as much fervor because it would be familiar.