<story><title>Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them</title><url>https://www.vox.com/2015/6/12/8768827/seniors-aging-car-driving</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>avs733</author><text>I, and several of my friends when I used to live in Phoenix, were big walkers. Its evening? go for a walk around the neighborhood. Walk to work, even though it was like 1.5 miles...just...walk.&lt;p&gt;Each of us were stopped at least once by police for being suspicious...near as I can tell (we were all &amp;gt;middle class white people) all that was suspicious was us walking on sidewalks. Outside of the biggest cities America is actively antagonistic towards walkers. My sincere belief is because of the assumption that they are poor and should be judged.</text></item><item><author>virmundi</author><text>Out of curiosity, why give up your license? It&amp;#x27;s a great ID. You don&amp;#x27;t have to use it. I know plenty of people with licenses to carry concealed, but don&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;To you point about car dependence, not using one is humiliating, at least for me. I live about .25 miles from my office. I walk daily to and from (twice). I feel, and have seen, people look at me like I&amp;#x27;m poor. It is a foreign concept to many that walking or biking might be better (especially in Florida where on those rare 30 degrees nights, me, a Hoosier, is right at home, but right now it&amp;#x27;s a balmy 68).</text></item><item><author>dundercoder</author><text>I’m 36, live in the suburbs, and in recent years have gone (legally) blind from Retinitis Pigmentosa. Voluntarily giving up my license was one of the hardest and most important decisions I’ve made. There is literally 0 public transportation here. Not even Uber or Lyft have come around.&lt;p&gt;America’s sprawl and dependence on cars is incredible. It wasn’t until I spent time in London, Oxford, and Paris that I could recognize how much everything here is built around the idea of owning a car.&lt;p&gt;So now my wife has to give rides to our four kids, AND me, and there’s literally nothing I can do about it except petition for better transit, and pray self-driving cars get here faster.&lt;p&gt;Being dependent on rides feels like being 15 again. It’s humiliating being picked up from a job interview in a parking lot with 200+ cars.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TulliusCicero</author><text>Even in big cities American urban design tends to strongly favor cars and ignore pedestrians. Here in Germany, any decent sized intersection will have pedestrian islands, often multiple islands just for a single side. In the states, these are relatively uncommon.&lt;p&gt;Or look at where the stoplights are. In Germany, they&amp;#x27;re set back such that it&amp;#x27;s impossible for a driver to go into the crosswalk and still see the light. This naturally encourages drivers to respect the crosswalk. Not so in the US, unfortunately.&lt;p&gt;I could go on and on, but really almost all American streets are hostile to anything that&amp;#x27;s not a car.</text></comment>
<story><title>Once seniors are too old to drive, our transportation system fails them</title><url>https://www.vox.com/2015/6/12/8768827/seniors-aging-car-driving</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>avs733</author><text>I, and several of my friends when I used to live in Phoenix, were big walkers. Its evening? go for a walk around the neighborhood. Walk to work, even though it was like 1.5 miles...just...walk.&lt;p&gt;Each of us were stopped at least once by police for being suspicious...near as I can tell (we were all &amp;gt;middle class white people) all that was suspicious was us walking on sidewalks. Outside of the biggest cities America is actively antagonistic towards walkers. My sincere belief is because of the assumption that they are poor and should be judged.</text></item><item><author>virmundi</author><text>Out of curiosity, why give up your license? It&amp;#x27;s a great ID. You don&amp;#x27;t have to use it. I know plenty of people with licenses to carry concealed, but don&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;To you point about car dependence, not using one is humiliating, at least for me. I live about .25 miles from my office. I walk daily to and from (twice). I feel, and have seen, people look at me like I&amp;#x27;m poor. It is a foreign concept to many that walking or biking might be better (especially in Florida where on those rare 30 degrees nights, me, a Hoosier, is right at home, but right now it&amp;#x27;s a balmy 68).</text></item><item><author>dundercoder</author><text>I’m 36, live in the suburbs, and in recent years have gone (legally) blind from Retinitis Pigmentosa. Voluntarily giving up my license was one of the hardest and most important decisions I’ve made. There is literally 0 public transportation here. Not even Uber or Lyft have come around.&lt;p&gt;America’s sprawl and dependence on cars is incredible. It wasn’t until I spent time in London, Oxford, and Paris that I could recognize how much everything here is built around the idea of owning a car.&lt;p&gt;So now my wife has to give rides to our four kids, AND me, and there’s literally nothing I can do about it except petition for better transit, and pray self-driving cars get here faster.&lt;p&gt;Being dependent on rides feels like being 15 again. It’s humiliating being picked up from a job interview in a parking lot with 200+ cars.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>crottypeter</author><text>This is very telling&lt;p&gt;even though it was like 1.5 miles...&lt;p&gt;It should be the other way round &amp;quot;People drive to stuff, even though it&amp;#x27;s only 1.5 miles&amp;quot;.</text></comment>