[cranekam]

I saw a great quote recently (perhaps on HN?):

"A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation."

-- Gustavo Petro

This is, for me, very true. I lived in the US and would not say that having to own a car and drive everywhere is desirable. Vast areas of land are given over to cars — roads, parking lots, etc, to the degree that walking is discouraged or even impossible (no sidewalks, 4-8 lane roads). The air is smoggy. The act of driving itself is not enjoyable — traffic is awful (hi 101) and cities are a stop/start grind. It's miserable.

[prirun]

Another bad thing about cars these days is that many people think they can talk on the phone and/or text while driving. I was in a pretty bad wreck last week - slammed into at an intersection. Because I had a 2003 Accord in excellent condition with 90K miles that I planned to drive for another 10 years, I get totally screwed on insurance and will be lucky to get $6K for it. Buying a used 2018 replacement with 30K miles was $30K, so compared to leaving $24K invested, I'll end up being out around $48K because of someone else's bad driving. (And no, you can't drive well while using a phone "hands free"; it's the lack of mental focus that is the problem, not using your hands.)

Of course, if I had been walking instead, this bad driver would have likely taken me out.

[flavius29663]

> The air is smoggy

In most of the US this is not true. Air quality in Europe is significantly worse than in the US, in general. This is form my anecdotal experience, but you can also see it in online sources

https://nimonik.com/2018/05/air-quality-in-europe-vs-the-uni...

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/12/science/who-says-europe-t...

Check similar sized cities on the map: https://waqi.info/

We have to thank Europeans' genius idea to subsidize/force diesel engines on people's cars. Each diesel car pollutes as much as a bus, and half of cars are diesel! We saves 0.001 of CO2 emissions for the next decades, but we got pollution and cancer and deaths instead.