Do Americans really see driving a car as a form of freedom ?

28 comments

  2. I’m so opposed to public transport that on weekends I torch buses with other red-blooded Americans. /s

  3. Henry Fords ghost actually breaks the kneecaps of any Michigander who uses public transportation

    We use cars out of fear for our lives

  4. Well, the car is a form of freedom, but I’d enjoy public transport if it worked better.

    I’m in the NYC metro area. It’s pretty good here. It could be better, especially evenings and with alternatives/redundancies when things go wrong. When a single rail line fails, there really is no alternative for many people but to wait 4-8 hours for things to get fixed.

    I’ve taken trains to Philly, Boston, DC, North Carolina, Chicago, and California. Other than our east coast high speed rail (Acela, kind of expensive), train service is damn slow and irregular.

    Air and cars are faster. They’re cheaper.
    If we had a fast national rail network, maybe things would be better. Maybe not. It’ll cost many $trillions and $trillions to find out.

  5. I’m not anti public transportation, but I’d still prefer to drive myself most of the time.

  6. When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, they burned their shared ship and said, “Never again.”

    Every year, we celebrate that victory over public transportation with the Thanksgiving holiday.

  8. Driving is convenient and most of America developed during the advent of the automobile. Much of the US isn’t as dense as other countries (notably Europe) and there is a correlation between density and public transit being feasible.

    I’m not opposed to public transit, but in many parts of the US it doesn’t really make any sense. Also driving is very convenient in a lot of the US.

  9. The thing is, that America is huge. Massive, even, for the amount of population (around 340 million) living here.

    The public transport is concentrated where the most population lives. New York, Los Angeles, you get the point.

    If we were to compare it to say, the UK, which is less than the total land area of Texas, then trying to connect *all* of the major cities by subway would be a *hugely* expensive task.

    It isn’t that Americans are against Public Transport. It’s that the land area is so huge that we can’t efficiently do more than we already have – trains and busses between major cities, and where major cities exist, subways/trolleys/etc.

  10. I grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey where getting around was tough so having a driver’s license was definitely a symbol of freedom. I work in NYC and commute by train every day and my job has me moving around to different areas of Manhattan through the day so I take the subway to get around. I’ve grown to love commuting by train because it gives me time to catch up on social media or whatever during my commute while not having to worry about navigating traffic. My experience is probably different compared to other parts of the US since New Jersey’s trains are NYC centric and mapped out to get us into the city and NYC’s subway system is more developed than most of the country.

  11. I’m someone who has never driven. I don’t even know how to drive. I take public transit everywhere. Even so, I recognize the freedom of being able to leave somewhere when you want to and not based on a bus schedule. So I find your question really weird. It is “freeing” in a sense to be able to go shopping, shove everything in your trunk and leave when you’re done, as opposed to walking quite a bit farther than your car would have been with heavy bags, squeezing those bags at your feet so other people can sit next to you, and either watching the time when leaving to make it to the bus stop shortly before it leaves (which is difficult unless it’s the beginning of the route because buses are always late, except the rare time they’re early) or waiting in the cold, the rain, the intense heat, etc. for maybe 20+ minutes because you just barely missed the bus. So I’m certainly not opposed to public transit, but yeah, I do see driving a car as a form of freedom.

  12. Driving a car is a necessity. Most places have little to no public transportation. Walking is out of the question this time of year not only
    because of distance, but the heat and humidity can be dangerous if you’re not prepared for it. Especially with wet-bulb temperatures regularly being reached this time of year. Plus, I go fishing three to five nights a week. I need a vehicle to load my ice chest, tackle and rods.

  13. Public transport is only viable in small areas and even then it’s so aggravating to deal with

  14. I’m not opposed to public transportation, it’s just not near me. I would take the bus to work if it went within 10 miles of my house and also didn’t cost an arm and a leg.

  15. I’m not opposed to expanding/improving public transport. I’ll never use it though really aside from maybe a trip where I know I’ll be drinking heavily and don’t want an Uber. Otherwise driving is always superior.

    > Do Americans really see driving a car as a form of freedom ?

    I do. There’s no world where I’ll use public transport for day to day errands. I’d rather take one or two short trips in a week with my vehicle to get groceries and such versus many on public transport with only what I can carry for a family of 4. Also the drive will always be faster considering I can leave when I want, no walk and wait times, etc. No fussing around with getting the kids on a bus/train, checking routes, transfers, walking in the rain/blizzard/deep cold, etc.

  16. The issue is that most Americans don’t have access to good public transport, so it’s natural they would prefer cars.

  17. We should improve public transit but unless I lived in a city like New York or Boston I can’t see how it would replace driving for me. Why would I pay more money to sit on a dirty seat with no climate controls or ability to blast my own music, potential of being attacked/watching someone OD/strip/etc, no phone charger and no comfy heated seats when I could just drive and get all of that?

  18. I don’t think I’ve ever met a person who was *against* public transport. I know plenty of people who lack an animating political passion about it and sort of just vaguely wish it would be better.

    >Do Americans really see driving a car as a form of freedom ?

    Sure, and you probably would too if you lived here, it’s a very big and spread out country with a lot of places to go.

    Look, everything you need to understand about the fundamentals of American public transport is in [this population graphic](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337174560/figure/fig1/AS:824280719818752@1573535246448/Human-population-density-of-10km-by10km-grid-cells-of-the-USA-the-2010s-and-Europe.jpg). Where do you think the trains are? Where do you think they’re not?

    I don’t think many Americans feel that this is a “we should have more buses and trains *instead* of cars” angle, more of a “we should have more buses and trains” angle.

  19. I’d support public transportation similar to Singapore’s

    However, it is much easier for me to drive

  20. It’s been years since I’ve lived in an area with public transportation, but when I did, occasionally I would ride the city bus. I lived 7 miles from my job. On a heart traffic day it might take me 12 minutes to drive to work. If I took the bus I’d have to catch the bus a 1/2 block from my house 90 minutes before my scheduled shift. The closest stop to my work was over a 1/2 mile to my job. It then too 45 minutes to make the same trip that took 12 minutes if I drove myself. The closest place to catch the bus home was closer to a mile from my job. I was young and walking a mile wasn’t that big of a deal, except if it was raining or snowing. Speaking of snowing, if there was snow there was a good chance that the buses wouldn’t run but I’d still have to be at work.

    Since then I’ve worked other jobs in areas without public transportation. Some were short commutes some were long. Right now I live 30 or 40 miles from the Atlanta city core. Atlanta has public transportation but not as far out as I live, and I work 14 miles from my house I need a car, public transportation is not an option for me, it’s not a viable option for many if not most Americans.

    Also in my car I’m in charge of all the music being played, who’s riding with me, and how many stops are made.

  23. We aren’t opposed to public transit. The issue is: in most cities and pretty much all rural areas, public transit doesn’t get us where we need and want to go so we’re not going to be trading our cars in anytime soon.

  24. No, yes, and yes.

    Opposed to public transport? No.

    Are the obstacles to it just BS from the auto industry? Yes, but it’s not just them. Far from it.

    Do Americans really see driving a car as a form of freedom? Yes, we do indeed. This is not a tiny, compact little country.

  25. Well, driving a car does feel significantly more convenient to me than even the best public transportation. I can get in my car exactly when I want to leave, go exactly where I want to go, stop along the way anywhere I feel like stopping, and do the same coming home. I can leave and go to the convenience store at exactly 2:43am if I want to.

    Most importantly it enables living away from all the commercial areas with all the noise and strangers milling about that entails. Usually people pushing public transportation are also pushing high density mixed use construction which I adamantly and stridently do *not* want to live in. (It’s fine if other people do, but I absolutely refuse to live in such a setup and went to lengths specifically to avoid it. if I wanted that I’d buy a house on Main Street in my township, I want something quiet and tucked away in the woods, without random people walking past and noise around all the time.)

    Probably an important factor is that I don’t live anywhere that traffic/congestion/finding parking is a significant factor in my daily life. Obviously the calculations on convenience start to shift in an urban environment pretty quickly. But again… I put significant effort into making sure I don’t have to live in an urban environment. It’s not for me. But there’s utility for people like me in giving the city-dwellers all the affordable housing and walkable whatever transit thingamabobs they want, so that they can stay in the city instead of being pushed out to a town and neighborhood surrounded by farms that they don’t actually want to live in and complaining it’s not urban enough.

  26. 1. Most parts of the country do not have practical public transit. It’s either very limited in terms of routes and times or it just doesn’t exist.

    2. The cities that do have public transit always have a homeless problem with them. If given the choice most people feel safer in their own car without mentally ill strangers in their immediate proximity.

    3. Cars are much more convenient – because of how we’ve designed our cities and our consumer culture. Carrying a weeks worth of groceries, laundry or any piece of furniture on public transit is going to be an extreme hassell/improbability. So is being able to leave your home and go exactly to your chosen destination.

    4. Families don’t have to worry about their children getting lost on a train platform or not having a seatbelt on a bus or their kids annoying folks and embarrassing them.

  27. No one is really opposed to public transport. It’s just that a LOT of the country is rural and pretty spread out such that public transport isn’t as efficient or convenient.

    That said, we probably could have a better rail system connecting the major cities, but since we built a country with infrastructure designed for cars, it’s not a priority to most.

  28. I used public transit a lot when I lived in Chicago and had easy access to it. Most places don’t have more than a bus system which really isn’t adequate.

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