M. 34

I’m currently studying for the theory and then the practice for the license and I hate it… But since I’m unemployed for like half a year now maybe it will give me more chances to get hired. Still I will avoid driving as much as possible, being on a highway scares me and I’m afraid of having an accident. Plus I wear glasses and I’m not sure if my reflexes or peripheral view are good enough…

So, what’s your reason to not drive a car… money? For the environment? Are you afraid? You really don’t need to?

  • flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz
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    5 months ago

    Not wanting to learn or not wanting to drive?

    Knowing how to drive is a useful skill that can come in handy (vacations, emergency) even if you don’t do it regularly.

    Refusing to drive daily - absolutely, for political, social and economic end ecological reasons. Everyone living in range of an acceptable public transport should refuse to drive. And those who are not should not stop pressuring and voting local politicians to implement one. It’s 2024, there’s no reason to depend on cars for everyday transportation.

      • 8565@lemmy.techtriage.guru
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        5 months ago

        OK to the person that down voted me please tell me the most rural place you’ve visited and a plan to implement public transit? In my area house can be separated by up to 9 miles. It takes a school bus 3.5 hours to pick up and drop off before and after school. So how could public transit be implemented in any meaningful way? Let’s say I worked in the city which is a 42 mile drive, now first I would need a minimum 2 hour ride from my house to the small town. Then after that I have to wait in some bus station, then its at least 1 hour before I get into the city so at a minimum I would have a 3 hour trip to and from work everyday. Now to make it worse it isn’t a perfect world because lets say my bus from home to the station and the bus into the city are off from each other, now its 4-5 hours or transport one way everyday (8-10 total)… Do you see how that couldn’t work in any meaning full way? Now if you want to say bullet trains, or trains, that is ridiculously expensive to implement and grand scale, and just like in China would end up being mostly traveled only by elites so it wouldn’t even be accessible to me.

        Not to mention with only 800 people in a 50 mile radius the amount of taxes that each person would have to pay to build a public transit here would be insane.

        Now if you want to go county wide, my county has a population density of 10 residents per square mile compared to the entirety of New York City which is 29,000 people per square mile.

        Or even worse the country of Korea and my state are similarly sized, my entire state has a population density of 67 people per square mile, Korea has a population density of 1,000 people per square mile.

        More populated areas make public transit plausible but, the US is mostly rural space and that is different from pretty much every other country.

        • jet@hackertalks.com
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          5 months ago

          I like to think of the people who downvote, but don’t comment, just had a small accident in the user interface. They misclicked! Or swiped to hard!

          Because obviously, if they had something to contribute that contradicted you, they’d leave a comment!

            • jet@hackertalks.com
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              5 months ago

              Ok… Let me try.

              Cars suck. Rural people who don’t work on a farm should move to a city where they don’t need a car. If they won’t move, then they better get used to biking or walking.

              Horses would be better for the environment because they are a sustainable solar organic ecosystem

              • 8565@lemmy.techtriage.guru
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                5 months ago

                Cars are better for the environment than horses (I say this as so.done who’s family has a lot of horses lol)

                If cow farts are bad then horse farts are bad, also it takes a lot of diesel to harvest the feed necessary for horses scale that up to the size needed for modern day populations and horses are way worse for the environment than cars.

                Ps. I appreciate you humoring me lol

                • jet@hackertalks.com
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                  5 months ago

                  The USA sustained a huge horse population pre-engine. While quality of life was lower, the horse energy cycle was totally renewable.

                  The issue of industrial farming using oil, is a separate problem, and one that eventually will have to get addressed. Either through some innovative battery technology, or alternative fuel like hydrogen.

                  But even in pre-engine United States, horses weren’t one for every person, they’re relatively rare, because they’re expensive to maintain, they eat a lot of food right, they require daily upkeep, veterinary care etc huge capital investment.

                  I think in the right green sustainable system, people would live close enough to where they work, where they wouldn’t need to travel vast distances every day. So in the infotech economy, that means people work from home, no commute needed. Just food delivery which could be batched, buses, or even the rare horse-drawn cart for a neighborhood.

                  The rural population that commutes a distance to work, factories, manufacturing, those would be the hardest to adapt to a non-vehicle lifestyle. I’m not sure how you could do that without moving a lot of people.


                  One possible reason people don’t like rural living, is if you got all the rural people to live in a city, it would raise city housing prices, and if they were invested in property that might be to their advantage.


                  • 8565@lemmy.techtriage.guru
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                    5 months ago

                    This isn’t co.etely inaccurate however the popation of the US has gone up dramatically and requires a different scale of horse feed production because we would have dramatically more horses for example

                    in 1910 which is when peak of horse population happened there where 27 million horses the works out to about 1horse per 4 people which would mean almost 100 million horses today

                  • 8565@lemmy.techtriage.guru
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                    5 months ago

                    I think the best way to solve the problem is to start offering better sustainable vehicle (this doesn’t mean electric per semi) id like to see ammonia powered cars or better hydrogen cars, these are things that we generate everyday and have a clean output, also I would love to see car company’s retrofitting old cars over building completely new cars as this would dramatically lower the environmental impact of car production, which is the highest envirmontal impact of cars.