What we pay in efficiency we gain in freedom: I can go wherever I want whenever I want however I want.
Do I want to drive to Yosemite on a Wednesday afternoon in my F-350? Yeah. Do I want to drive down to the Safeway one late evening because I just ran out of eggs? Yeah. Do I want to drive down to Costco this Saturday to buy the next month's worth of foodstuffs and supplies? Yeah. Do I need to drive down to the pharmacy to pick up some prescriptions? Yeah. Do I want to drive across the country in my motorhome over the course of a month? Yeah.
Being tied to public transport means you are beholden to them with regards to when, where, and how you travel. That ain't fun in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Of course, that's just why we all drive our own cars. I haven't touched on why trucks and SUVs in particular are also seeing higher popularity.
The answer to the latter is simple: Bigger/heavier cars are safer when crashes happen and can transport lots of cargo, and being higher up means we have better line of sight and thus awareness of our surroundings. The bigger engines usually found in SUVs and trucks also means the car handles more swiftly, which is indispensible for hopefully avoiding dangerous situations should they occur.
> I can go wherever I want whenever I want however I want.
Except of course if you like walking and caring about all the health benefits that come from not needing a 5,000 pound vehicle to do the most basic elements of life like going to a coffee shop, a local diner etc.
> Do I want to drive down to the Safeway one late evening because I just ran out of eggs? Yeah. Do I want to drive down to Costco this Saturday to buy the next month's worth of foodstuffs and supplies
By simply from the brands referenced above, you seem to live in a very templated suburb that has been copied and pasted verbatim across the country. Being around nothing but epitomes of generic large-scale cookie-cutter grocery stores, where each location is indistinguishable to each other, fast food restaurants serving factory-made food, retailers at strip malls lacking any character etc. is the exact opposite of "freedom" to me. It's dystopian and conforming at its very core.
> The answer to the latter is simple: Bigger/heavier cars are safer when crashes happen.
Except unless you are on the receiving end of these monstrosities, or worse yet, you happen to be a pedestrian. This argument that bigger/heavier cars are safer is incorrect even at the most fundamental level for drivers, because taken to its logical conclusion, if everyone drove bigger/heavier cars for safety as a reason, the net effect would lead to everyone being worse off and unsafe, as two large cars colliding are far more dangerous to both parties than otherwise.
I'm actually on the side of a small mountain, can't see my neighbours through the thick forest around me. It's anything but a templated suburb here.
The town is just a few minutes' drive away, though, with most of the common modern amenities one could want. If I want to go shopping at Costco that's a 30 minute drive away on the freeway to the neighbouring city.
Incidentally, the "cookie cutter" stores are all quite distinguishable. The people around here are all wonderful, so they give each store their own little identity and flair.
You're arguing against urban policies in cities from the point of view of rural areas. Nobody's trying to make remote villages walkable.
A heavier vehicle is only safer in a crash when crashing into a smaller object. All you're doing is increasing your own safety at the cost of everyone else's.
>You're arguing against urban policies in cities from the point of view of rural areas.
Keep in mind that a "city" can be more rural than most people realize.
For example, the town that's 5 minutes' drive away is legally designated as a city (it's the county seat, in fact) despite the population being just under 40,000 and the surroundings being as rural as it gets. In terms of physical size, I can drive across the entire city in 5 to 10 minutes assuming I don't get stopped by traffic lights.
A neighbouring city in the same county, and I believe it's the second-most populace city in the county, has a population of just over 2,000 and can be driven through in less than a minute. Yes, it's legally designated as a city.
>A heavier vehicle is only safer in a crash when crashing into a smaller object. All you're doing is increasing your own safety at the cost of everyone else's.
Yes, and I have no qualms about that fact. We all take steps to better our own place in life, sometimes at the cost of others. I'm doing it to someone, and someone's doing it to me, no big deal.
It's not like bigger and heavier cars are restricted only to the wealthy either, so you can't even argue this is wealth inequality.
Do I want to drive to Yosemite on a Wednesday afternoon in my F-350? Yeah. Do I want to drive down to the Safeway one late evening because I just ran out of eggs? Yeah. Do I want to drive down to Costco this Saturday to buy the next month's worth of foodstuffs and supplies? Yeah. Do I need to drive down to the pharmacy to pick up some prescriptions? Yeah. Do I want to drive across the country in my motorhome over the course of a month? Yeah.
Being tied to public transport means you are beholden to them with regards to when, where, and how you travel. That ain't fun in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Of course, that's just why we all drive our own cars. I haven't touched on why trucks and SUVs in particular are also seeing higher popularity.
The answer to the latter is simple: Bigger/heavier cars are safer when crashes happen and can transport lots of cargo, and being higher up means we have better line of sight and thus awareness of our surroundings. The bigger engines usually found in SUVs and trucks also means the car handles more swiftly, which is indispensible for hopefully avoiding dangerous situations should they occur.