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by Aurornis 26 days ago
You're going to get picked apart by people who live within walking distance or public transport distance of their office and don't understand why everyone else uses cars.

If you can walk to your office and the temperature is always between 50 and 70 degrees F you would probably think cars are crazy, too.

Which, funnily enough, proves the point even further. Some people get so comfortable in their bubble that they become unable to even comprehend why other people make other choices in other situations.

4 comments

> by people who live within walking distance or public transport distance of their office

So, the vast majority of people living in cities?

> the temperature is always between 50 and 70 degrees F

More like between -15°C and 35°C (though the upper range does depend on humidity).

What a weird analogy.

I almost always walk to the office. The temperature range is a lot bigger (freezing in winter to uncomfortably hot in summer), and it's like 3 km, which many people wouldn't dream of walking. When my work was farther I used to cycle.

Most people can easily get to work without a car. Just depends on goals and motivations. Car is definitely the laziest way.

> Most people can easily get to work without a car.

This is statistically very false.

It does a good job of proving my point that people within this bubble have a hard time understanding what the rest of the world is like.

You're the one in a bubble.

[Edit:] That wasn't very helpful of me, let me expand: I live in a city of 400,000 people. It can be crossed on foot in an hour, faster by bicycle. For people who can't or don't want to, the public transport is good. And yet there are traffic jams everywhere.

I used to live in Amsterdam, which is a bigger place. I cycled around 13 km each way, which isn't entirely unusual.

I stand by my point that most people can easily get to work without a car. Most are just too lazy to walk/cycle/use public transport. If you have any data showing otherwise, I'd be delighted to see!

> You're the one in a bubble.

The average one-way commute in the United States is 27 minutes. Source https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/one-way-...

Unless you were making a statement about your city, it's not true that most people could easily get to work without a car.

> I stand by my point that most people can easily get to work without a car.

This probably feels true if you're in a bubble where everyone is like you: Presumably healthy, younger, not having to drop kids off at school(s) and then pick them up with your work day in between, and the weather is walkable.

It's cool that you could bike 13km each way to work. I bike a lot and could do that in my sleep. However I'm not going to start throwing out accusations that everyone is lazy and unmotivated, because I know everyone has different circumstances.

I had a 35 minute commute at 65mph for a while and there was not much traffic. I had no choice. The office was relocated and I had to make the drive until I found another job. Not possible to walk that distance. If I biked it I would have been biking for hours every day with no chance to see the kids before school or pick them up.

Your generalizations are why I said people who make these claims live in a bubble: If you think most people could easily ditch their car for work, you don't understand the diversity of how people live.

> The average one-way commute in the United States is 27 minutes

A bubble right there.

> Unless you were making a statement about your city, it's not true that most people could easily get to work without a car.

It appears you're making a claim about the US, while I was making a general claim, not necessarily specific to the US.

And I'm not claiming everyone can get by without a car, I'm claiming most of the world population could easily commute without a car, if they wanted to.

Many people just don't want to.

> you don't understand the diversity of how people live.

Respectfully, if you think most people can't but drive a car to work, you're the one who doesn't understand diversity. This is further supported by your US-centric worldview.

Usonians...
You are picking at the analogy rather than engaging with the point. In the US, excluding areas with substantial public transportation infrastructure (realistically just a few major cities), car ownership is nearly universal. You can choose to not own a car as a lifestyle choice but you will be making concessions in other areas (the types of jobs and homes you have access to), similar to how refusal to use AI in software engineering at this point will substantially limit your options and ability to participate in the sector.
I live in Southwestern Ontario and I think cars are crazy.