[lotsofpulp]

Cars destroy walkability, cyclability, ability for kids to freely play outside, enable sprawl (hence more energy consumption hence more carbon emissions).

There’s no free lunch with using more surface area, which cars greatly expand people’s ability to consume.

[nsokolsky]

True to a degree but cars also make parenting easier: you get bigger houses, bigger backyards, don't have lug your kids around on public transit, deal with the weather, don't need to worry about rail worker strikes, etc.

All America's missing is laws that allow kids to walk to school and adding more sidewalks to enable this, but this is changing over time (see Utah's free range parenting law).

[Aeolun]

Do bigger houses make parenting easier, do bigger backyards? I’m inclined towards a large communual yard (a park, if you will) being many times more efficient at keeping them busy, especially if you have a single child.

Lugging your children around on public transit builds character that chauffeuring them around in a car does not. They’ll be exposed to a variety of people and situations they’d otherwise never experience.

Similar thing for the weather. I don’t want my children to grow up thinking that any kind of weather limits their options if a car is not available.

I realize my opinions might be different if I were living in a US city, just wanted to give a different perspective.

[xyzzy123]

The other great thing about public transport is you don't have to "lug" / "chauffer" them at all after about 8 or so (what age makes sense depends on area and the kid of course). They can exercise some independence.

[15155]

Do Lyft/Uber not grant the same independence?

[Detrytus]

Maybe that's true in small, peaceful countries like Denmark, but in the US children "excersising some independence" would likely be kidnapped, raped or killed.

[danaris]

This has never been significantly true, and becomes less true every year.

The probability that any given child will be kidnapped or otherwise threatened by a stranger is minuscule compared to the chance that they will be abused, kidnapped, or killed by a family member.

[amanaplanacanal]

People don't like to think about this harsh reality. Stranger danger is much easier for them to accept.

[itronitron]

It's a low probability, high impact event in a country with limited public access to affordable health care and very limited access to therapists.

[xyzzy123]

Are you sure that's true? How do you know?

How much does it depend on where in the US you are?

[nsokolsky]

> Lugging your children around on public transit builds character that chauffeuring them around in a car does not

I'm talking about ages 0 to 3 when parents need to use a stroller. It's a huge pain to do this in public transit. It's easier when the kids are older but if you have more than one child the car still wins.

[ido]

Both my kids were born in Berlin (now 6 & 8 years old) and we never owned a car. In some ways transit is even easier with a stroller as you can just roll into the subway/train instead of having the disassemble the stroller and put it into the trunk. Buses require a bit more effort to board with a stroller but newer busses allow the driver to lower them near the curb to make boarding with stroller easier. We’ve done that for the entire time our kids used strollers.

[nsokolsky]

I'd bet good money on your life being overall easier in a less dense city and two cars. But yes, you can do it and people have raised kids without cars for millenia.

[ido]

Life in a less dense city itself would be different (fewer career opportunities - despite remote work, less cultural opportunities, etc). Also kids become more independent earlier so we won't have to drive them everywhere as teens etc.

[lotsofpulp]

>All America's missing is laws that allow kids to walk to school and adding more sidewalks to enable this, but this is changing over time (see Utah's free range parenting law).

Laws and sidewalk curbs don’t stop a giant SUV/pickup truck driven by someone looking at their mobile at 40mph in a residential area.

And crossing a 50ft+ wide intersection of a 40mph road (which means people drive 50mph) is daunting even for adults, and simply not advisable after the sun goes down. Those arterial roads basically box in your kids’ roaming area.

[jjav]

> And crossing a 50ft+ wide intersection of a 40mph road (which means people drive 50mph) is daunting even for adults, and simply not advisable after the sun goes down.

At least here (California) those intersections have stoplights and pedestrian crossings, so the width and moving speed of the road are not relevant. The cars will be stopped when you cross by walking.

I don't remember exact age but certainly before kindergarden age my child (and all the neighborhood friends in that age range) knew how to operate the pedestrian walk buttons and cross safely.

I fully agree it can be nicer walk when you don't have to cross a larger road. But at the same time, the difficulty of doing it is often greatly overstated. Press button, wait a bit, cross. Done. This is not in the top-100 things I'd like to see improved in society.

[lotsofpulp]

> The cars will be stopped when you cross by walking.

You live in a place with some combination of far more traffic enforcement or far more conscientious drivers than me.

All I see when I look around is a sea of people glancing up and down between the road and their phone. It would be negligent to let my kids cross an arterial road, especially after dark.

[jjav]

Not sure about far more conscientious, but people do stop at red lights. Seeing someone run a red light is very rare, maybe once every 3-4 years. And even those aren't blatant, they are people trying to get through before the red but failing. So what I do (and teach the kids) is that when the pedestrian crossing goes green (or white, technically) then wait a second, look left & right, and if everyone is stopped, then cross. That eliminates the risk of someone trying to rush through in the last second, and at that point it is perfectly safe to cross.

[Symbiote]

A law could ban those SUVs.

It's currently being discussed in Europe, since the "independent import" route to import a special vehicle has started to be exploited to import unsafe American vehicles. (The Cybertruck is one example.)

[pikelet]

And yet I frequently see (in New Zealand), properties with oversized double garages (often built to fit oversized American vehicles) and driveways that take up half the land on the property. Cars use a huge amount of space in roads, carparks, garages, and are responsible for pushing things further and further away from the home. And then somehow cars are seen as the solution for the very problems they create. There's plenty of real world evidence that there are better ways to solve this.

I don't think cars are responsible for bigger backyards at all. The size of the average property where I live only seems to be shrinking as the roads get more and more congested.

[raverbashing]

Here's easier parenting: walk from your house/apartment to a close by square, and play with your kids there

[dreadlordbone]

Honestly, I don't want that lifestyle. I live in the burbs with a big house and yard. We travel plenty and go to places that are dense/walkable but I love coming back home to my carbrained neighborhood with an HOA.

[15155]

That's really too bad: your lifestyle does not support maximal economic output of the land you are using and tax dollars you're paying.

HOA? Hah!- those shouldn't be allowed, neither should home ownership generally. You really need to live and raise your family in an apartment.. taxes should be raised enough that we can phase out private home ownership.

Your children will attend a public school and understand and implement equity from an early age. They will learn to use and love mass transit, only the approved destinations are necessary.

The Party may decide that the 50% of your income you are generously allowed to spend on approved items is too much. Social programs aren't free, you know, you need to pay "your share."

[lotsofpulp]

More like

“That's really too bad: your lifestyle is only possible by indebting future generations for your luxury today.”

That’s great for those who have ridden the economic momentum from high fertility rates before the 1970s, but not so fun for those being born now.

[dreadlordbone]

Wouldn't low fertility rates make land less valuable? I don't get how my lifestyle indebts the future generations.

[komali2]

As someone who grew up in suburban sprawl, maybe it makes parenting easier, maybe. But they also had to drive me to and from school every day, and band practice, and every single game, and whenever I wanted to hang out with my friends. I would argue my parents basically were moonlighting as my Uber driver for about 16 years until I got my own car.

Big yards are great, but empty. Mom, can you drive me to my friend's bigger backyard? That times the 5 other friends that want to go to the friend's house that has the biggest backyard. Comically the 5 cars all waiting at the same stop light before the final turn, taking up the entire residential street as we all get dropped off and later picked up.

Eh, going to my friend's house is tedious. I'll just fully immerse myself in world of Warcraft, get fat, get socially maladjusted by spending all my time on the internet and 4chan, and enter college as a practically sociopathic asshole with no social skills.

Could just be me. But if I have kids, I'm raising them somewhere where they can just get on a train to get to band practice.

[maigret]

Funny, I was basically mobile with bike from age 10 or so. Had some friends I needed the parents for until I got a small motorcycle aged 14.

So living outside a city is not an issue, although I often wished we’d be nearer to a city.

But society has changed a lot since and everyone is scared of the beautiful outside world.

[komali2]

This was the life of my farmland friends in Wisconsin. In Houston if I had ridden my bicycle the mere 2 miles to my friend's house (half mile to leave my neighborhood, half mile to enter his, one mile or so on actual roads), I would almost certainly have one day been killed by a car or truck that failed to expect a kid on a bike.

We didn't have sidewalks. That area is still missing sidewalks actually.

In some ways our beautiful outside world is safer than it was 60 years ago, in others perhaps it's more dangerous.

[dreadlordbone]

That's a goalpost moved from my response.

[lotsofpulp]

The poster you responded to wrote:

> They're not just about reducing emission!

Cars increasing emissions seems to be a relevant disqualifier.