If really depends on the city you’re in. Some cities do have a bike culture, especially those where there are big Universities (in my experience). It also depends on the area you are in. In Turin for example there are a lot of young people cycling to the University Campus
I’d like to know where each of those places are. If I recall correctly (and if I’m wrong, I would like to be corrected with visual evidence), one thing the US has over pretty much all of Europe is the natural landscapes.
Europe also has stunning natural landscapes. Just look at the Swiss Alps as an example.
It do believe it is true, however, that in America you are more likely to encounter vast expanses of beautiful (nearly) untamed nature.
As for the pictures in America, I just googled some nice urbanism terms and US and picked the first pictures that seemed nice.
I think the first one is in Boston, but I don’t know where the other ones were taken.
News outlets like the BBC try (in my experience most of the time, but not always) to avoid implying something without some evidence or source. The driver was probably at fault, but it could have been a mechanical failure, a panicky swerve to avoid a dog running into the road, etc. Without knowing more they report passively, which I feel is appropriate.
So the owner (who is probably the driver)'s fault.
a panicky swerve to avoid a dog running into the road, etc.
So the driver’s fault.
Without knowing more they report passively, which I feel is appropriate.
But yes, this remains correct even if the driver is at fault, someone must assign that fault, and that’s not BBC’s job. Could passive voice the driver in there too though.
On the note of mechanical faults, it is odd that cars are typically safetied when sold/transfered to a new owner and never really required to be inspected again. Regular safety inspections should be a mandatory part of car ownership.
100% agree that it’s horrible wording, but the linguistics nerd inside my brain just has to say: that’s not the passive voice.
Passive voice would be something like “a store was smashed into” or “a car was driven into the store”, where the grammatical subject is the semantic object. It can be used to avoid saying the subject of the sentence, who’s doing the action, but in this case they keep the active voice and just change the subject from a “driver” to a “car”.
On another note, it’s also telling that the article first comments on financial damage, then that the driver is unhurt and the car is damaged, and only after that does it say that the store-owner and the two customers were unharmed.
At least they didn’t use the victim-blaming language news outlets often use for pedestrians and cyclists: “Tanning shop struck in accident wasn’t wearing a helmet”. No mention of the driver, the car, who had the right of way, who was speeding, etc.
To play devils advocate for some trucks, in some situations they really are needed. I happen to live in an area with lots of dirt roads, and in the spring we have “mud season” where the roads just turn to soup. I have had it where the ruts are so deep (1-2 feet) that the only thing that could make it is a stupidly large truck.
That being said, the vast majority of people don’t live on or near dirt roads and never have a need for a truck this big.
Wish the better car manufacturers put any effort into the small truck market, but apparently there just isn't enough demand for compact trucks to make non-cheapo versions.
Yes, but you also have people like my dad, father-in-law, and some of my neighbors who would be perfectly fine without the trucks and large SUVs they have and renting a truck once a year for the time they do need the truck.
It’s not just the big box stores that rent trucks, the small town hardware store next to us rents trucks and does free delivery within 3 days of an order and in a 10 mile radius of the store.
So then you get down to towing which could also potentially be solved by renting depending how often or what you’re towing. If you’re towing something that can’t be done by car and doing it often then it probably makes sense to have a large vehicle to do that. Otherwise sensible sized vehicle with towing capacity to tow the thing you need. Our little hatchback with a hitch can tow 2000 lbs.
During the pandemic my wife and I went down to one car and she thought it was going to be a nightmare. Three years in and we are just fine and we have saved a ton of money in gas, insurance, and maintenance costs. Once or twice a year we think it would be nice to have a second car for a specific instance, but not enough to deal with the headache of the additional costs of additional car again.
My point with that last paragraph is that collectively, we have become so ingrained into thinking that it has to be the way it is, that many people are afraid to even try something different. Even when it’s going to be greatly beneficial to them over time.
I never said there weren’t people wasting resources who purchase them. There are plenty of people who use them for the correct reasons. All of you are here yelling me how they can all just rent a truck each weekend but that’s just not a sane use case.
Some large vehicles are necessary but not generally for personal use. The amount of time most people actually spend using the largeness of their vehicle is greatly outweighed by the time not using the largeness. Just rent a large vehicle when you need one, it’s cheaper in many ways.
I’m not renting a vehicle every other weekend, it’s a pain in the ass. I’m not concerned about cost. There are plenty of people who use their trucks. There are plenty of personal use cases.
I tow ~7.5 times a year, and use the bed ~50 times a year.
I’m replacing my truck with a berliner soon. It can tow 2,000kg with is probably 49)59 of my bed usages. I’ll rent a truck the 7-8 times a year I tow plus any time the utility trailer is insufficient.
People do complete these tasks, but massively underestimate the number of times they complete them. I log all vehicle use, so I’ve got rel data to use instead of feelings. The trigger for replacing my truck is the need to fit a car seat, but once I did the math, the berliner will cost me less per year than my current vehicle even with adding some financing, and and order of magnitude less than going for a larger truck.
Only like 25% of pickup drivers actually tow more than once a year, and only slightly more actually use the bed.
Most of those people would be better off if they could just rent a truck a few times a year if they actually need to. Fairly few people who tow infrequently need a truck on short notice to e.g. tow an injured horse to the vet. And most of the rest would be better off with a smaller truck like they used to make.
People who actually use their trucks to the fullest exist, but are a fairly small minority. People wouldn’t really care about trucks if only people who really need them had them, and if there were a wider variety of things like kei trucks for light farm work.
I’ve shared this story before but maybe not on Lemmy:
Landed in Amsterdam in 1997 for the beginning of a six month backpacking tour through Europe (obligatory cliché thing to do for every 22-year-old). First thing outside the airport I notice is these big roomy sidewalks. So much space! So much freedom! So much—holy shit where did these bicycles come from? I quickly found out their sidewalks were highways for their insane bike infrastructure. Just bikes everywhere as far as the eye could see.
Moved from South Africa to the Netherlands about 2 years ago, I have gotten so used to the infrastructure I have a mild panic attack any time i think about how on earth I would get from a hotel to a super market if I go back to visit Cape Capetown South Africa.
I have gone from desperately fighting that I need the best car and I should be able to speed all I want to being happy to just hop on my bike and cycle to work never caring if there will be parking.
This country may as well be a fever dream and some day soon I will wake up back home.
No but their no longer crammed up shoulder to shoulder,.oh yes let’s not forget the car seat for the toddler and the ever growing 11 year old. What kind fucking stupid comment is that?
Parking structures are insanely expensive. Like, each parking spot in a parking structure costs like 30X what it costs to build a surface parking spot. It’s a crapload of concrete, and with climate change, concrete ain’t getting cheaper (concrete is extremely carbon-intensive, it releases CO2 intrinsically, not just from power-generation).
edit, since I’m getting downvotes and I assume this post is being read as an endorsement of city-destroying surface parking: The correct solution is just to not do parking at all except for extreme needs and focus on human-scale transportation.
Yes, but concrete parking structures are an order of magnitude moreso. Assuming $50k per parking spot and a 25-year mortgage, each spot will incur $328.58 in monthly mortgage costs. Assuming full occupancy every workday and zero on weekends (21 workdays per month) that means the daily parking fee should be $16 just to break even. This is a thumbnail sketch of course, but it shows the kind of costs we’re talking about.
Upfront, yes. But you’re not counting the energy that everyone uses and will forever have to use to roam around a city that is way larger than it needs to be. Not to mention the obvious wasted land.
But Cletus can’t fit his 10-foot-tall, 8-foot-wide, cyclist-crushing, peelout-producing penis replacement in a normal parking garage! Who will think about poor Cletus?
I dunno. I had to drive a truck over the weekend, to move 3 cords of wood. I rented an F250, which is a big truck. It was useful to have; there’s no way that I would have been able to move that much wood with a smaller truck and trailer, and, if my driveway wasn’t so tight, it would have been nicer to rent a larger dump trailer (I’m pretty sure that I was over the maximum load rating on the trailer for each trip).
…But it’s not a fun truck to drive. Power is slow compared to the compact car I usually drive, and very slow compared to my motorcycle, steering feels sloppy, brakes are feel mushy, fuel economy is terrible, and it was so goddamn big that I had to drive very carefully to be sure that it wasn’t over any of the lines on the road. Aside from the ability to move a very heavy load–greater than a ton–it really doesn’t have much of anything going for it. I can’t imagine why most people would want one, compared to a vehicle that allows them to react quickly.
Bro. if you just stop being a decent person and do all that stuff with a truck. You’d be confused as a Floridian with a Lifted 03 Ford Expedition.
I don’t think anyone Ultimately hates Trucks for their intended purposes. It’s the SuperSize Me Trucks that are exclusively used to show off tiny penises and get groceries and that’s it…I know Plenty of Craftsmen with Dualies. but they also Take their workshop with them in the morning, I can do that too with my subcompact. Because I’m more of an Electrician, my tools aren’t so cumbersome
Two things: First of course is one simply must have a nicer, bigger, more powerful truck than that guy.
The second thing is no, that F250 you rented wasn’t comfortable. You most likely rented an F250 XL. The XL trim is the lowest, meanest, least comfortable version of Ford’s trucks. The people who need their brodozer status symbol drive the fancy versions that have the soft carpet, power windows, leather seats, and a bed cover because lets be realistic, that truck bed will never carry anything more than groceries.
I have an F150 XL that I bought used. It was a rental truck from some hardware store called “Menards”. It has no carpet, no power windows, no tint, steel wheels, no extended cab, no crew cab, no CD player, just a bench seat and an 8ft bed.
When I worked at a bank not too long ago I got to drive the company car once and its one of those van sized 3 row SUVs with a truck bed’s worth of space (probably a full 8 feet!) when the third row is folded down and holy cow that thing handled like a boat, accelerated poorly, breaked really hard and had a super disconcerting glide to the suspension.
I had to go pick up some packages for my department that the post office had said were a lot, but it turned out to just be like one seat’s worth of boxes, so i couldve just driven my own car and expensed the miles, so it was a waste of a trip for that giant boat
99% of people would be better served by getting their stuff delivered or renting a truck the two days a year they need to haul stuff.
The majority of the pickups we see today in the streets are status symbols driven by insecure people, as evidenced by the truck bed not having a single scratch.
Scratches are not indicative of use. I’ll definitely be getting a truck in the future, it’s nice to be able to haul things, take canoes / kayaks out, have more room for our family trips we take many times a year where a small SUV barely cuts it. We’ve had to take two cars places before so yes a truck would be really nice.
Some people do, but it’s a dead giveaway when a truck bed is so small it can’t hold a sheet of plywood, AND the truck is super clean AND it doesn’t have any dents and scratches.
At that point it’s obviously not being used for what it was originally designed for.
Because they take up too much room on the roads, make a shit ton of noise, are less safe for other users of the road, are less versatile than other vehicles. Those were the objective reasons.
Now for the subjective reasons: they’re ugly as sin, expensive as fuck, the fuel cost is too high and they suck at driving in the snow.
They don’t really say on their website how much less range it has once you attach a trailer to it, beware.
Also the vehicle being so high and wide means it’ll be hard to park. That alone should be a deal breaker for anyone living close to a city.
The extended cab means less room in the bed. If the goal is to carry stuff, you are losing both room and range. Your stuff also is gonna get wet unless you buy something additional to cover them.
EV large pickups seem to me like the worst of both world when I stop and think about it.
The bike’s production has a non-zero carbon footprint. A very small footprint, but one that is there nonetheless. The carbon footprint of walking is negligible in comparison.
Debatable, and largely depends on a person’s diet and some other factors like how much travel is getting done. If someone is fueling their biking (or walking) by flying in beef from the other side of the world, I think it is pretty safe to say that their carbon footprint is worse than a typical gas car, (because air travel and beef are just that bad) or if not that at least an electric car from renewables and ethically sourced materials. For everything else in between, we’d just be speculating and we’d have to factor in source and type of car fuel, and the source and type of additional food consumed by a cyclist where that “additional food” line lies exactly.
Controlling for diet, distance and purpose of travel, I think cycling virtually always wins over walking.
Shoe production has a non-zero carbon footprint, especially with the vast majority of shoes being a “single use” product (i.e. not resoleable) and with a very limited amount of miles
Not all shoes are so limited, you can buy shoes that have plenty of lifespan such as Brooks running shoes. I’ve put hundreds of miles on mine and they’re still in good shape. That being said with planned obsolescence and cheap manufacturing for fast turnover being prioritized, we end up with less reliable shoes.
And hundreds of miles, before you throw away a pair of shoes, my… Look, that might mean much to a Northern American who drives everywhere.
“Hundreds of miles” is what I actually run each year, and then I get lots of hiking and just walking around on top of that. I guess I can measure my Redwings and Hanwag in tens of thousands kilometers each, and my Lundhags I could pass down if I had kids.
I’m not sure I was disagreeing with you in the previous statement. I haven’t thrown my shoes I’ve only put hundreds of miles on yet.
My point is that it isn’t exactly easy to find good shoes unless you invest a lot of money into them, especially in North America since we’re specifying locales. Most stores, even specialty stores, don’t carry custom-made or handmade shoes that are re-soleable. You could blame that on car-dependency, but it’s more likely due to an overall lack of understanding why one would need shoes that last much longer. People spend their money on cheaper, shorter-life shoes because they don’t have that much money to begin with.
I’m not sure I was disagreeing with you in the previous statement
Then don’t repeat things I explicitly mentioned, as if I said something else?
Also get better examples. Brooks break down as easy as Asics, Saucony, whatever. They are exactly the “single use” product I spoke about, making the shoe and clothing industry in general highly non carbon neutral, which was my point.
it isn’t exactly easy to find good shoes unless you invest a lot of money into them
Yes, it’s called the Sam Vimes “Boots” theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
Hundreds of miles? I’ve walked/run hundreds of miles on my ~$10usd shoes and they’re still holding together. I would expect a expensive pair to manage thousands or ten-thousands of miles.
It depends. Expended energy/m is higher but space usage is much lower. For walking you arguably don’t even need a paved path while (non-sport) cycling needs a somewhat even surface and places to store and lock the bike. It’s not nearly as bad as with cars but even with cycling, space usage can become an issue in very densely populated areas; the Dutch don’t build massive bike garages because it’s cool (okay, maybe also a little of that) but because it’s a necessity.
If it’s near enough to walk, it’s usually better to just walk.
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