What a braindead take, everything in the second panel 100% also applies to the first. In fact, the us is more diverse like are you fucking kidding me???
Fun fact for my fellow Americans the current Cannonball Run (New York City to Long Beach, Ca) record is 25 hours 39 minutes at an average rate of 110 mph.
So you can cross the country in just over a day provided you drive like a bat out of hell.
If you fell asleep at the beginning of a 4 hour drive where I live, and woke up at the end, odds are very very high that you wouldn’t be able to tell any difference in the surroundings.
The thing is, Australia is basically the same size as America (minus Alaska), but only has 6 states and one state-sized territory. 7 compared to 48 means the time taken to travel across one state is much greater.
Canada is obviously a lot bigger than Australia, but it also has a lot more provinces/territories. 13, which is almost double. And while it’s a lot bigger, it’s nowhere near double the area. 30% extra land for 85% extra provinces, to be precise.
I’m a Canadian living in Korea and sometimes have to explain to locals that the reason I’ve never been to Vancouver is because I lived on the opposite coast and it would take a week to drive there. In Korea, aside from a few outlying islands, you can never be more than four hours away from anywhere else in the country.
Yeah, I’m similar, living almost in the middle of the west coast in Oregon, USA. I can drive 20 hours south and only change states once. That’s traveling 65MPH+ most of the time.
This is what most people on Lemmy don’t understand when they complain about cars in North America. Texas and California combined are the size of all of Europe. America and Canada are very large. In most situations we do need cars to live a normal life.
These days, yeah, but I used to live in country town Australia, without a car or license then either. I admit, that was harder, and did limit my options, but the majority of people don’t live in country towns in Australia or the US
The size of the country/states isn’t really the issue, right? You can cross Europe via train pretty easily, 4hrs London to Amsterdam, longer over land than Dallas to San Antonio for example, but I’d assume a normal life doesn’t regularly involve driving all around the state. Most of daily life is just within a city or region, the size of the country is irrelevant there.
There absolutely are major factors that basically force North Americans into cars, I agree, but I don’t think size is an excuse for those factors.
edit: This video talks about the ‘North America is too big’ argument in detail, but fair warning, the creator is a bit annoyed and crass at the start and talking about comments they get. You can skip to 2:30 to jump over it.
I think a lot of it is historical. America and Canada had virtually unlimited land for growth, so everything just sprawled outward. In Europe you’re crossing multiple countries to travel the continent like you said. Since space was always a concern, more thought has been put into the designs and layouts. There are enormous American cities with poor public transit, and even if they had good public transit, it would take a long time to go from one part of the city to another. We’ve seen thoughtful layouts and good public transportation in dense cities where it makes sense, like SF, NYC, and Seattle. Cars are convenient for urban and rural sprawl, and there wasn’t a lot of motivation for alternatives until recently.
BTW, you can cross the United States in a train too, but it’ll take you 79 hours.
Parts of it is historical, although it shouldn’t be understated that a lot of it was political (in the sense of powerful business interests influencing policy to advance their economic interest) and poor urban planning forcing that sprawl. As the video mentions, public transit like trains and streetcars necessarily predated the advent of the mass produced automobile around 1930, a long time after the initial sprawling. Almost all cities had them, they were removed and not replaced.
What I mean by this is that even with the open colonial sprawl, the current state of things was avoidable and, although increasingly difficult, can be undone and improved.
Oh yes, there’s definitely a political element to it, driven (no pun intended) by business desires. I just read on Lemmy today that Michelin Tire Company started reviewing restaurants and awarding stars hoping to motivate people to drive further for culinary experiences. Driving further meant more wear on their tires, and thus more profit. That’s the kind of genius marketing plan that I don’t see very often today, and is a great example of those business influences at work.
The notion of “jaywalking” is also invented whole-cloth by the car industry. Prior to that, streets were a place that people could walk or ride safely, cross wherever the want, or even just hang out and maybe just get out of the way if someone wants to get by. A “jay” was an insult sort of like “loser”.
Their older history is not a significant factor in European cities being more walkable/cyclable. In fact, thanks to the impact of WWII, many European cities had to be rebuilt and are those in some ways younger than significant American, Canadian, and Australian cities. The Netherlands, often the posterchild of walkability and cyclability, was heading very much in the same direction as the US in the post-war period, up until the Stop de Kindermoord movement of the 1970s started a versal of that trend. And even then, it wasn’t a complete 180. Government votes supportive of stopping the child murder only barely won out over car-dependency, and many local businesses and entrenched interests were just as staunchly opposed to improved design in the Netherlands as they so often are today in places like America and Australia.
It’s definitely possible for car-dependent cities and countries to improve. It just requires people supportive of change to speak up. Convince others to also be supportive. Most importantly, contact your representatives and vote for people who can be convinced to do better.
There are many states where you can drive more than 4 hours and not leave, but now I wonder about the reverse: what is the maximum number of states you can reach in a 4-hour drive?
Surely, the route has to be through many of the small states in New England. I think it would be tough to reach more than 5.
One state was gone in 3 hours, the next in about 5 MINUTES since it was just the tip, and the remaining 9 took me to the other side. Granted, at the time, the speed limit was 60 the entire way, and the vehicle was limited to 55 for the trailer.
I was thinking Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia. Technically more like 15 minutes going through Hagerstown, MD but I’m not even from the area and just have a fascination with border quirks
The 9 hour state has to be either PA or TN, either that or they crossed the Mississippi River and cut across the tip of Missouri or Illinois. That last state has to be one of the bigger ones. I suppose Florida is also a 9 hour state
Yes! My favorite part is that when they realized that it was south of the 49th parallel, Britain tried to see if they could just have it. Obviously that didn’t happen.
Without traffic you might be able to get Maine,new Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and maybe Pennsylvania, but that route would take you through/close to Boston and New York City, so there’ll be traffic
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