Silently huge issue: Boomers cannot walk. I know many that cannot walk a single block. It's why they want parking right up to the door, won't take transit, etc - but it's never the given reason.
It's a huge reason American cities are so car centric, too.
Pretty broad paintbrush you got there to mark an entire generation (which I assume you are not part of) as the "problem". Guess when they die off in 2 decades we will be in a walking utopia.
Perhaps the author of that comment was a millennial.
Constant, random shit-talking of our generation was the norm set by uncreative thinkpiece authors as we were growing up, so it can be easy sometimes to fall into that mindset. Blame whoever was writing popular media from like 1995-2015.
Don't know. I am renting my apartment in my 40s because a certain generation blocked all new housing construction using NIMBY regulatory capture.
Now seem to be even buying up all the scraps (with cash) that are left over with their enormous savings from the market bull run and housing boom. While enjoying high interest rates of their savings.
No, because we've built a ton of infrastructure around their car-centric culture. Even after they die off, it'll take many more decades to rebuild cities and suburbs around the rock-solid assumption that everybody has a car.
And we're leaning even more heavily into it. Self-driving cars change a lot of things, but they still contribute to the notion that things can be arbitrarily far apart. If we're very lucky, it will mean that fewer people will own their own cars, and maybe they'll demand infrastructure where they won't have to pay to go to the grocery store. But even that happens on a nuclear fusion time scale (always 20 years away).
So no, we're not getting a walking utopia when the Boomers croak. That can't happen until their buildings and roads also rot away.
In the Netherlands it took them about 3 decades (~1970 - ~2000) to have decent bike infrastructure, in the context of them WANTING in 1970 to change the infrastructure.
In the US in 2023, the majority of people don't want non-car infrastructure. So realistically widespread/easily available/universal biking/walking friendly infrastructure in the US will probably happen in 2070, if it happens at all.
This is another benefit to decent bike infrastructure. One of the dads at my daughters' school has only one leg, and his kids just ride on the scooter with him, about a mile.
This is obviously completely anecdotal but I've been noticing the same whenever I’m on holiday here in Europe or abroad.
My girlfriend and I like to guess where other tourists we see on the streets are from and one of the most obvious indicators for Americans is that as soon as they hit 40-50 there’s a high chance they're either limping or using a cane or similar.
My theory used to be that a lot of them played high-impact sports such as (American) football or basketball in their youths and consequently ruined their knees. But honestly not being used to walking might also contribute
"My girlfriend and I like to guess where other tourists we see on the streets are from..."
This is part of why some people don't get out more... the creepy people watchers.
Maybe someone in the near future will create an analog to the first person shooter, a first person labeler, that will keep some of these folks on the couch.
do you think people say mean things about you when you're not there?
do you think that people are rude and insulting to others by default?
this is a common occurrence for people who act this way towards others. if you engage in the above behaviors, then you likely assume everyone else does too, and therefore are reasonably upset at the mean things and sneering you anticipate others engaging in. it's really important in these scenarios to recognize that your actions and others are most likely not the same, most people don't just shit on strangers for 'fun'.
"noticing people around you and thinking about them"
Your description of people watching sounds innocent, considerate even, but I think you're leaving out the display of open contempt that is so common these days.
I'm an endurance athlete and went to Rome last year for a vacation, lots of site seeing. I was racking up 35-45k steps per day and it even tested my fitness. There's something about the heat coupled with old streets that mess your legs up. I can imagine it being very difficult for someone out of shape, or in bad health.
When people start hitting their late 20s/early 30s they become very sedentary and their body just starts falling apart which creates muscle imbalances and now you got a domino effect of weakness throughout their body. I work as a SysAdmin but I have a standing desk and I use it that way. I only sit to eat. On top of walks and going to the gym.
My theory for this is that boomers have a weird conception around strength training. They don't do it, and they have weird notions about it. Many women from that generation seem opposed to lifting weights.
The stronger you are, the longer you will be able to move.
> Boomers cannot walk. I know many that cannot walk a single block.
Boomers are between 59 and 78, so that there are a fair number that can’t walk a single block isn't surprising (Silents are even worse in that respect.)
> It's a huge reason American cities are so car centric, too
No, its not. Its true that when that trend began, most Boomers couldn't walk, too (for the opposite reason; many were too young, more weren't born at all), but that really wasn't the driving factor.
Racism was a pretty big factor, as well as corporate interests.
I've never understood that American obsession with drawing distinct lines between people born in different decades. Boomers, X-ers, millennials, Z-ers are treated like different dog breeds when they are all individual people with varying socio-economic backgrounds.
it's not just America... lots of other countries will blame their problems on others...
I apologize for invoking Godwin's law, but Nazi Germany is a good example, as were/are communist countries blaming everything on 'the capitalist', feminist blaming things on the patriarchy, European (and possible American) far right parties blaming everything on immigrants...
"it's the fault of $OUTGROUP" has been a beloved tool of demagogues everywhere for centuries now.
wars of religion, for example, witch hunts... yeah.
People will do a lot of awful things to other people to avoid confronting their own flaws.
Its not just boomers. Recently was in a major US city, a walkable one, for a work offsite. The plan was office -> happy hour -> dinner. We're talking a 7-12 min walk MAX between places. Entire team insists on Ubering everywhere. Everyone is under 40 years old, mostly out of shape/overweight, but not terribly so. Certainly capable of walking a few hundred steps. I suggested walking and was met with "company is paying for everything, so lets just uber". Ironically, a few people on this team complain about car culture and walkability.
> Silently huge issue: Kids today cannot walk. I know many that won't walk a single block. It's why they want parking right up to the door, won't take transit, etc - but it's never the given reason.
Children didn’t completely rebuild America around their laziness. Boomers control most wealth, the govt, and every major city planning department. This is their choice and their fault.
Uuuugh BMI. Something a twelve year old might come up with but is still the gold standard. Every weight lifter has a laugh when it comes back as overweight or obese and they get suggestions on how to trim down. For non-strength sport practitioners it may make more sense.
The fat end of normal is most certainly not "objectively" overweight. BMI is a fairly flawed system, created during a time of hardship without sufficient demographic/physiological diversity.
I'm the "fat end of normal" and nobody has ever consisdered calling me fat. Once you get over 6' the BMI chart gets absurd, assumingly due to physiological differences in population from then and now. Take someone who is 6'3". 150-190 lbs is "normal". If most people saw a 150 lb 6'3" man, they'd say they look emaciated. I would guess that most 6'3" men who look fit still weigh over 190lbs.
6'1" here and I can speak to this as well. I've straight up had women tell me I look worse at 175 than around 190 (and looking at pictures of myself at different weights, I'd say I looked skinny even thought 175 is still above the midline of normal BMI). Technically the line is right at 189; 188 is normal weight and 189 is overweight so I try and just ride the top of normal and focus on being fit.
So, on average people didn’t even walk more during the pandemic? Weird!
I wonder how the distribution changed. People who walked everywhere beforehand would, I guess, have had fewer places to walk to. People who typically drove everywhere might have had nothing to do but take a walk.
But, on the face of it, seems like just bad news, we’re already pretty sedentary, and getting worse.
Yeah, weird. In my neighborhood (admittedly very safe for walking, and in an ideal climate) the streets were full of people going for a daily walk (twice daily for some people) throughout 2020-2021. There was nowhere to go around the neighborhood; it was just to get out of their houses.
Edit: I guess this study really doesn't measure for that(?). A three-mile walk for exercise through the neighborhood counts as one "trip" whereas a few 250-meter walks across parking lots count as a few trips.
I live in a very walkable city. Pre-pandemic I would always scoff at people I know in other areas who need to drive everywhere. But during and post-pandemic, I no longer leave my house anywhere near the frequency that I used to. And so now I walk just as little as those other people.
Very strange that Orlando ranks so highly in walking trips. I can only assume that the data is thrown off massively by the theme park visits. Probably the same with Las Vegas.
Yeah, that sounds right. There's a mountain near Los Angeles called Mt Baldy that is pretty gnarly. I think it's about 10,000 feet high and I've hiked it 3-4x at this point. I get the same amount of steps hiking that mountain as I do when I go with my wife to disneyland. lol. Of course, the elevation gain is the killer but I was always amused by that fact.
As someone who was just there, you can't walk practically ANYWHERE in disney world. Within the parks sure, but getting between places is a nightmare if you don't have a car. There are zero sidewalks anywhere between any of the resorts and parks. We stayed at the Port Orleans resort and were forced to take a bus to Epcot (15 minute drive, for the record) when the entrance is literally across the highway! We had to add almost an hour for transit anytime we wanted to shift sites, and there was never an option to walk. We couldn't even access a pharmacy when my partner realized their contact solution was out - we would have had to pay for a Lyft because not only were there no sidewalks, the parking lots were literally fenced in. Coming from more regular trips to the Anaheim location where you can easily walk from any nearby hotel to anywhere you need to go, I was shocked at how aggressively anti-pedestrian it all felt.
Anecdotes from recent-ish visits to the US, I’m curious how representative these might seem to Americans: when walking in a Southern California suburb, from my hotel to a supermarket about 3 km away and back, all along perfectly decent (but empty) sidewalks, I was stopped by a police officer who wanted to run my ID for warrants. When I asked why I had been stopped, he said "People don’t walk here. I thought it looked suspicious.”
In two separate visits to Alabama, whenever I walked a couple of kilometers from where I was staying to the closest shop, a driver passing by called out "f-ggot!". I had been warned beforehand that people don’t walk there, and my local contacts all agreed that that slur was due only to the fact that I was walking. My ultimate conclusion was that unless you live in a community where people do walk, walking anywhere in the US comes with social stigma, and people are reluctant to be seen as weirdos.
no, this is sadly classism at play. the 'you are walking and bad' comes from only poors can't afford a car, and poors are violent. so clearly you walking is a form of violence against the community, so we send out a cop with a right to eliminate you to verify that you aren't as poor as they fear!
Sorry, I am deeply skeptical that the first event happened. The police in the US do not have the right to stop individuals without reasonable suspicion of a crime.
"Reasonable suspicion" is a joke. The cop writes down that they saw someone in an area known for criminal activity acting in a furtive manner, with something in their pocket whose outline is consistent with the appearance of weapons and/or drugs. Done and done.
They can do whatever they like to harass you, including arrest you. You may or may not have a civil rights case afterwards, but probably not unless their behavior was particularly egregious.
"You can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride."
I can give you an n=1; I have been detained by police for walking around in a suburb.
I was 18 and in community college. I couldn't drive so relied on rides to and from. Sometimes I had several hours between classes so initially I went for long walks since there wasn't much else to do. There was a quiet neighborhood across the street so I usually walked around there.
That stopped after a cop drove up to me and ordered me to state my business. "What are you doing here?" he asked.
"I'm just walking around," I said. "I-"
"_Why_?" he asked, looking incredulous, like I had just said I had been trying to skateboard on the back of a turtle.
Apparently he had been called because of my "suspicious activity": there were some cool rocks on the shoulder of the road that I had stopped and fussed over. (And probably pocketed, because hey, cool rocks)
There's your reasonable suspicion: college kid picking up interesting stones from the public shoulder of a road.
If Mr. Policeman says you look suspicious, guess who's getting stopped?
I'm not saying the cop can't ask you questions, I'm saying he can't demand your ID and run it for warrants, and you're free to leave that situation if you want.
Come on... Practically, the police can do whatever they want, and it's up to the victim to fight it in court if it was wrong. If an officer wants to detain you without reasonable suspicion, they're going to do it, regardless of whether it is legal. If they want to arrest you without probable cause, they are going to do it.
Yeah, walking in the south has a similar connotation to not being fat in say, old school tribal cultures. It means your poor and up to no good. If you happened to jog that same stretch, no one would mind it. lol
US citizen here in New England, I've had people flip me off twice, throw stuff at me twice (both times empty chewing tobacco containers), and yell at me many times over the past three years of regular walking.
Harassment from drivers is not an every day occurrence but it's not uncommon. Anecdata and I don't know how it compares to other nations.
More anecdata: When Bill Bryson moved back to the US for a time, he specifically chose a walkable place to live -- Hanover, NH. He reported in his book, I'm A Stranger Here Myself, that he had been stopped by concerned neighbors on multiple occasions, offering him a ride. They were perplexed as to why he'd choose to walk.
Another: I heard a story on a podcast a few years ago about a woman who, in pouring rain, chose to drive to a PTA meeting at her child's school rather than walk. Now, this would make sense in most circumstances, but this woman's front door was quite close to the school entrance -- closer, in fact, than the school's parking lot was. By driving, she actually increased how far she walked.
There's a lot of ingrained driving culture in the US, unfortunately, and I'm sure that WFH and transit avoidance in a post-COVID world have made it that much worse.
>> He reported in his book, I'm A Stranger Here Myself, that he had been stopped by concerned neighbors on multiple occasions, offering him a ride
That has happened to me before in a scenario similar to the original poster's scenario, walking between a hotel and supermarket. This was in Texas. Perfectly polite, they probably just assumed that my car was in the shop.
If you wanted to walk in peace in a neighborhood like that you would need to get a dog.
I've gotten a "why didn't you go through the drive-through?" on occasion walking in to fast food places after using an app to order. I can't even use the "wait until near to start cooking" option because the distance would be seconds to minutes by car and they assume everyone's driving.
Then there are the places that are drive-through only and don't bother to update their listings on map apps or even the company's own store finder. If you won't pay enough to find enough staff to open for walk-ins after several months, it's time to admit you're drive-through only and update the listings. Walkers famously value our lungs and don't want to stand in line behind cars, and would rather walk on somewhere else.
Its a big country and cities are designed for cars not pedestrians. The expectation is you should be driving. Of course, thats a very different perspective from a European angle where there is more density in cities and generally better public transportation.
US and Europe are, very roughly speaking, the same size in terms of landmass but Europe has more than double the population. So US is "relatively" empty.
Southern Californian suburbs are often "designed for pedestrians" in the sense that they have remarkably smooth sidewalks, with dips at curbs because legislation has long mandated disabled-friendly construction (in that sense the US is ahead of some EU countries). Of course there is the expectation that one should be driving, and it can get tiresome to wait forever at the constant button-operated pedestrian crossings, then have to rush across the six-lane road. But if people don’t walk, it is not due to lack of infastructure.
> But if people don’t walk, it is not due to lack of infastructure.
You can pave sidewalks, people don't walk because the grid of urban "space-time" is too spread apart to access anything by foot. It's not just because of lack of infrastructure sometimes, it's principally because most distances in a urban place with cars are car distances
Loads of Americans find themselves less than two miles from a shop or fast food location. That is a distance that many people in other countries will walk just to get outside and move, and think nothing of it. While in most of the USA sprawl is prohibitive, I suspect that, in many urban locations, people aren’t walking because they think it’s so very far. It’s not far, it’s just that a car and cheap fuel has already made many people lazy.
When people in population centers in other countries walk those distances they may weave from a store into another, along the way. Perhaps that's a reason those distances seem so very far in America, they're boring, visually barren and barren of things to do, there aren't street cafes where a friend or acquaintance might be found by chance.
Even though a suburbs sidewalk is just as "walkable" mechanically, it's much less fun. We don't want simply walkable streets, we don't want to think about walking at all. In modernity, health is an activity and consumer demographic onto itself. Seeing someone jogging in outfit has the air of class that a person simply walking to a destination doesn't have when we look at them, even though the person walking has healthy exercise figured, not as part of their lifestyle, but guaranteed in it.
You must have very bad luck. I live in the suburbs of the midwest with no sidewalks. Even if we had sidewalks, there's nowhere to walk to (sprawl and all that). So walking isn't really encouraged, but folks do it all the same. Walking their dogs, walking to work... and some of the roads ppl walk on aren't designed for pedestrian traffic. I'd say it's downright dangerous at times. But ppl do what they need to do I guess and nobody hassles 'em for it.
I think bicyclists get the most grief here, mostly because cars don't like sharing the road and bikes tend to slow down traffic.
Southern California is a place where people will drive rather than walk a few blocks but then spend a ton of time at the gym.
Alabama is hell.
There are parts of the U.S. where walking is very common. But even there, our car drivers are out of control, and there is very little traffic enforcement.
My experience is very different because I've never been in a deep red or rural area, and I'm a young-ish white male who presumably doesn't look poor.
But anecdotally, I've never been stopped walking or running anywhere. Occasionally but rarely someone honks or yells out something obnoxious out of a car.
Sidewalks are surprisingly empty though, even in urban areas. Even in Boston, the "third most walk-able city", there are a lot of beautiful places where you just don't see many people.
Had something similar happen to me in San Francisco. While I was walking a driver rolled down their window and shouted "white power" at me (I'm white). Very strange experience. At the time I lived in Chicago, walked everywhere, and never experienced that sort of hostility.
Same trip, I ended up renting a car and going to Bodega Bay where I was again screamed at by a driver who was apparently upset with my driving (this was on the access road to the park). The "f" word was used at me as well.
I'm not sure walking explains it all. There seems to be an abundance of miserable people in this country...
> Had something similar happen to me in San Francisco. While I was walking a driver rolled down their window and shouted "white power" at me (I'm white). Very strange experience. At the time I lived in Chicago, walked everywhere, and never experienced that sort of hostility.
I walk 15-20k steps daily (~12-15km... some of that is running). Have walked or run this much for most of my adult life.
I grew up in Pennsylvania and Ohio, have lived in Texas, Georgia, and California, and spent significant time in the Carolinas, Alabama, and Tennessee. I've never had any problems when I've been on foot. I've had a lot of problems on a bike, though. Had someone try to run my off the road in North Carolina, have had people throw shit at me in California (central coast area), and have had lots of derogatory shit yelled at me (I never knew riding a bike made you gay, I always thought it was something very different!) by people driving by basically everywhere. Most of those happened in places without dedicated biking infrastructure or lanes.
Where I'm at now, in SoCal, I haven't had any problems or otherwise heard anything anecdotally.
Haha, I learned I was gay the same way: Daring to ride a bicycle in rural, red-state Pennsylvania. Who knew a mere bicycle could change one's sexual preference just like that!
This is similar to what I experienced walking around in Ft Lauderdale. You're regarded with suspicion if you're walking, despite there being wide pavements on the street.
Not surprised if you're right, but I don't think that heat map takes any sort of timeframe into account, so it's just the history of all users who have recorded walks ever, from what I understand.
I made it a point to walk 3 or more miles every day this year. Haven't missed a day this whole year so far (knock on wood). It's been a great decision, although it is hard to compare it to what I would have felt like if I didn't walk, though.
It's interesting how many issues are actually urban vs rural that manifest as blue vs red with some outliers. And how the difference is always talked about in a partisan way but rarely in an urban/rural way.
Yes, find a map of polling down to the county level on any political issue, and this becomes very clear. Counties with major cities in red states are bright blue, and rural counties in blue states are bright red. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states#Urb...
As an aside, that Wikipedia article describes the interesting history of the "red state" and "blue state" terminology which apparently wasn't in usage until the 2000 Presidential election, because broadcast networks previously used the colors interchangeably (even intentionally so, to avoid favoritism).
I think a lot of people see that, but it seems rare that any debate is arranged in a way to investigate the topic from those two perspectives and the other demographics or situational factors that are related to those locations/environments.
I've posted this before, and I will post it again.
Distracted driving in the US is a nightmare. The number of people I see clearly no paying attention to the road is horrifying. Just today I was almost hit because someone was on their phone.
We have distracted driving laws, but they aren't enforced.
Most of traffic enforcement seems focused on revenue generation rather than reducing bad driver behavior. By my observation, seems police focus only on the easy to detect excess speed violations on highways: victim has no easy escape, everybody is likely driving in excess of the posted limit so it is shooting fish in a barrel. I don't think I've ever seen anybody pulled over for driving too close, driving inattentively, being on the phone, not using their signals etc [not saying it doesn't happen, but have never seen it. I have seen lots of people being pulled over for speeding]
The problem is that the collected fine moneys go to enrich the local police; it is hard to not see this as a protection racket.
Speeding, along with driving under the influence, are the leading causes of traffic injuries and deaths. They are easy to catch, but they aren't pointless stops.
I think that speeding well in excess of the limit is the only thing that they can prove in traffic court. It seems to me that everything else would come down to the cop's story vs. the defendant's story. Or they get lucky and find that someone's erratic driving is due to being under-the-influence, which is also easy to to prove. If anyone can explain how enforcement of distracted driving laws is supposed to work, I'm curious.
I am T1 diabetic, and I have been using a glucose monitor for years now.
Walking is one of my primary modes of blood sugar management. An insulin dose combined with walking leads to a much stronger response. As diabetes and other metabolic diseases are on the rise in the US, I can't help but think we should be prescribing more walking.
Exercise is more effective at preventing type 2 diabetes than diet, and yet all we do is moralize at people about diet.
We should be encouraging people to walk daily. This one simple trick would have profound impacts on our metabolic dysfunction, heart disease, and cancer rates.
The Levels Health people have a lot of data on this. Taking a walk after eating a meal can blunt the blood sugar spike by upwards of 50% (depending on the food and the duration of the walk). They did a study that showed walking after drinking a can of Coke drastically cut the blood sugar spike.
My PCP is the only medical professional that I has said this to me.
He said that he thinks exercise is far more important than diet to weight loss. I thought this was a bit controversial, but according to all his anecdata, the people who actually manage to lose weight are the people that are training.
I think if you train really hard, diet can follow. But even the benefit of exercise without a strict diet seem underrated.
Edit: more thoughts
Exercise is also easier than dieting. I find it much easier to do something than to not do it. Food access is a huge issue in many places, but you should be able to walk and do some basic training no matter where you are.
Ideally, you would tackle both, but the benefits of exercise go beyond burning calories:
1) Exercise helps with hormone regulation, including testosterone
2) Exercise improves mood, focus, and sleep, all of which help with stress eating and mindless snacking
3) Exercise builds and maintains lean tissue mass, which increases your metabolism
4) Sufficient exercise has been shown to blunt appetite (300 minutes a week)
Exercise puts you into place to be successful.
People who train daily just get so many benefits. One thing I read said you can sort of outrun a poor diet with enough exercise (combo of resistance and cardio). But, again, doing both yields really good results.
I'd walk more when WFH because you can get out for a half hour in the middle of the day (particularly when its sunny) and you're not commuting to/from work and spending all day under fluorescents in the office (and its the winter it is dark when you're home).
America has this obsession with creating suburban hellscapes where you cannot walk and and you and I both know it's because one group of people don't want to interact with another.
I visited family in a suburb in the midwest a few months ago after a long time away and living in the Bay Area. My mind wiped just how bad most suburbs are for walking. There were parks with zero sidewalks near the street. People looked at me like I was up to something by walking towards the downtown area on one of the remaining sidewalks. Almost nobody was just walking. Oversized trucks everywhere and zero walking. America can be a waking nightmare. It feels so unnatural.
Walking has become either paywalled, miserable, or impossible for too many people in USA, and routine walking is generally deleted from the culture.
It should be better. Somehow much of europe manages to allow people the possibility to step outside and easily walk anywhere: shops; restaurants; even paths along rivers, through forests or farmland -- places that would, if in USA, be fenced off and posted with (bullet-holed) "no trespassing" signs.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 180 ms ] threadWell I'm glad mass surveillance and spying on phone data resulted in something kinda useful. Efficient nagging!
It's a huge reason American cities are so car centric, too.
Constant, random shit-talking of our generation was the norm set by uncreative thinkpiece authors as we were growing up, so it can be easy sometimes to fall into that mindset. Blame whoever was writing popular media from like 1995-2015.
Now seem to be even buying up all the scraps (with cash) that are left over with their enormous savings from the market bull run and housing boom. While enjoying high interest rates of their savings.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/11/13/housing-m...
And we're leaning even more heavily into it. Self-driving cars change a lot of things, but they still contribute to the notion that things can be arbitrarily far apart. If we're very lucky, it will mean that fewer people will own their own cars, and maybe they'll demand infrastructure where they won't have to pay to go to the grocery store. But even that happens on a nuclear fusion time scale (always 20 years away).
So no, we're not getting a walking utopia when the Boomers croak. That can't happen until their buildings and roads also rot away.
In the US in 2023, the majority of people don't want non-car infrastructure. So realistically widespread/easily available/universal biking/walking friendly infrastructure in the US will probably happen in 2070, if it happens at all.
I'd hope that people with mobility issues could first reach for:
1. Recumbent bikes: https://www.getcycling.org.uk/recumbents/ (first regular ones, then electric)
2. Trikes: https://www.getcycling.org.uk/tricycles/ (first regular ones, then electric)
3. Handcycles: https://www.getcycling.org.uk/handcycles/
4. Wheelchair tandems where possible: https://www.getcycling.org.uk/wheelchair/
And only 5. or so should be mobility scooters, where they makes sense.
Because of the lack of bike infrastructure/walkable neighborhoods, I think the default in the US is directly a mobility scooter.
My girlfriend and I like to guess where other tourists we see on the streets are from and one of the most obvious indicators for Americans is that as soon as they hit 40-50 there’s a high chance they're either limping or using a cane or similar.
My theory used to be that a lot of them played high-impact sports such as (American) football or basketball in their youths and consequently ruined their knees. But honestly not being used to walking might also contribute
This is part of why some people don't get out more... the creepy people watchers.
Maybe someone in the near future will create an analog to the first person shooter, a first person labeler, that will keep some of these folks on the couch.
do you think that people are rude and insulting to others by default?
this is a common occurrence for people who act this way towards others. if you engage in the above behaviors, then you likely assume everyone else does too, and therefore are reasonably upset at the mean things and sneering you anticipate others engaging in. it's really important in these scenarios to recognize that your actions and others are most likely not the same, most people don't just shit on strangers for 'fun'.
Could you elaborate further as to why you do?
Your description of people watching sounds innocent, considerate even, but I think you're leaving out the display of open contempt that is so common these days.
It's relaxing, doesn't cost anything, can be done in many places.
The stronger you are, the longer you will be able to move.
Boomers are between 59 and 78, so that there are a fair number that can’t walk a single block isn't surprising (Silents are even worse in that respect.)
> It's a huge reason American cities are so car centric, too
No, its not. Its true that when that trend began, most Boomers couldn't walk, too (for the opposite reason; many were too young, more weren't born at all), but that really wasn't the driving factor.
Racism was a pretty big factor, as well as corporate interests.
I apologize for invoking Godwin's law, but Nazi Germany is a good example, as were/are communist countries blaming everything on 'the capitalist', feminist blaming things on the patriarchy, European (and possible American) far right parties blaming everything on immigrants...
"it's the fault of $OUTGROUP" has been a beloved tool of demagogues everywhere for centuries now.
wars of religion, for example, witch hunts... yeah. People will do a lot of awful things to other people to avoid confronting their own flaws.
https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/obesi...
> Roughly two out of three U.S. adults are overweight or obese (69 percent) and one out of three are obese (36 percent).
Disgusting trends
Aka 99% of people out there?
I'm the "fat end of normal" and nobody has ever consisdered calling me fat. Once you get over 6' the BMI chart gets absurd, assumingly due to physiological differences in population from then and now. Take someone who is 6'3". 150-190 lbs is "normal". If most people saw a 150 lb 6'3" man, they'd say they look emaciated. I would guess that most 6'3" men who look fit still weigh over 190lbs.
> 6'3". 150-190 lbs is "normal"
Yes, that is normal. Go to other countries that have tall people, and most of them will easily fall into that range.
Americans as a whole are INCREDIBLY overweight in general.
I wonder how the distribution changed. People who walked everywhere beforehand would, I guess, have had fewer places to walk to. People who typically drove everywhere might have had nothing to do but take a walk.
But, on the face of it, seems like just bad news, we’re already pretty sedentary, and getting worse.
Edit: I guess this study really doesn't measure for that(?). A three-mile walk for exercise through the neighborhood counts as one "trip" whereas a few 250-meter walks across parking lots count as a few trips.
But both show that you can make unwalkable areas highly walkable. People love going to Disney and being able to safely walk around.
In two separate visits to Alabama, whenever I walked a couple of kilometers from where I was staying to the closest shop, a driver passing by called out "f-ggot!". I had been warned beforehand that people don’t walk there, and my local contacts all agreed that that slur was due only to the fact that I was walking. My ultimate conclusion was that unless you live in a community where people do walk, walking anywhere in the US comes with social stigma, and people are reluctant to be seen as weirdos.
it's really cool
"You can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride."
I was 18 and in community college. I couldn't drive so relied on rides to and from. Sometimes I had several hours between classes so initially I went for long walks since there wasn't much else to do. There was a quiet neighborhood across the street so I usually walked around there.
That stopped after a cop drove up to me and ordered me to state my business. "What are you doing here?" he asked.
"I'm just walking around," I said. "I-"
"_Why_?" he asked, looking incredulous, like I had just said I had been trying to skateboard on the back of a turtle.
Apparently he had been called because of my "suspicious activity": there were some cool rocks on the shoulder of the road that I had stopped and fussed over. (And probably pocketed, because hey, cool rocks)
There's your reasonable suspicion: college kid picking up interesting stones from the public shoulder of a road.
If Mr. Policeman says you look suspicious, guess who's getting stopped?
I'm not saying the cop can't ask you questions, I'm saying he can't demand your ID and run it for warrants, and you're free to leave that situation if you want.
That feels OK to point out.
First example: representative, especially if you have dark skin.
Second example: representative, because Alabama.
Harassment from drivers is not an every day occurrence but it's not uncommon. Anecdata and I don't know how it compares to other nations.
Another: I heard a story on a podcast a few years ago about a woman who, in pouring rain, chose to drive to a PTA meeting at her child's school rather than walk. Now, this would make sense in most circumstances, but this woman's front door was quite close to the school entrance -- closer, in fact, than the school's parking lot was. By driving, she actually increased how far she walked.
There's a lot of ingrained driving culture in the US, unfortunately, and I'm sure that WFH and transit avoidance in a post-COVID world have made it that much worse.
That has happened to me before in a scenario similar to the original poster's scenario, walking between a hotel and supermarket. This was in Texas. Perfectly polite, they probably just assumed that my car was in the shop.
If you wanted to walk in peace in a neighborhood like that you would need to get a dog.
Then there are the places that are drive-through only and don't bother to update their listings on map apps or even the company's own store finder. If you won't pay enough to find enough staff to open for walk-ins after several months, it's time to admit you're drive-through only and update the listings. Walkers famously value our lungs and don't want to stand in line behind cars, and would rather walk on somewhere else.
US and Europe are, very roughly speaking, the same size in terms of landmass but Europe has more than double the population. So US is "relatively" empty.
You can pave sidewalks, people don't walk because the grid of urban "space-time" is too spread apart to access anything by foot. It's not just because of lack of infrastructure sometimes, it's principally because most distances in a urban place with cars are car distances
Even though a suburbs sidewalk is just as "walkable" mechanically, it's much less fun. We don't want simply walkable streets, we don't want to think about walking at all. In modernity, health is an activity and consumer demographic onto itself. Seeing someone jogging in outfit has the air of class that a person simply walking to a destination doesn't have when we look at them, even though the person walking has healthy exercise figured, not as part of their lifestyle, but guaranteed in it.
I think bicyclists get the most grief here, mostly because cars don't like sharing the road and bikes tend to slow down traffic.
Alabama is hell.
There are parts of the U.S. where walking is very common. But even there, our car drivers are out of control, and there is very little traffic enforcement.
But anecdotally, I've never been stopped walking or running anywhere. Occasionally but rarely someone honks or yells out something obnoxious out of a car.
Sidewalks are surprisingly empty though, even in urban areas. Even in Boston, the "third most walk-able city", there are a lot of beautiful places where you just don't see many people.
Same trip, I ended up renting a car and going to Bodega Bay where I was again screamed at by a driver who was apparently upset with my driving (this was on the access road to the park). The "f" word was used at me as well.
I'm not sure walking explains it all. There seems to be an abundance of miserable people in this country...
?? That’s just surreal
I grew up in Pennsylvania and Ohio, have lived in Texas, Georgia, and California, and spent significant time in the Carolinas, Alabama, and Tennessee. I've never had any problems when I've been on foot. I've had a lot of problems on a bike, though. Had someone try to run my off the road in North Carolina, have had people throw shit at me in California (central coast area), and have had lots of derogatory shit yelled at me (I never knew riding a bike made you gay, I always thought it was something very different!) by people driving by basically everywhere. Most of those happened in places without dedicated biking infrastructure or lanes.
Where I'm at now, in SoCal, I haven't had any problems or otherwise heard anything anecdotally.
https://www.strava.com/heatmap#7.00/-120.90000/38.36000/hot/...
Or is it Stockholm syndrome.
As an aside, that Wikipedia article describes the interesting history of the "red state" and "blue state" terminology which apparently wasn't in usage until the 2000 Presidential election, because broadcast networks previously used the colors interchangeably (even intentionally so, to avoid favoritism).
Whenever I visit the US I'm horrified at the pedestrian-crushing machines people use for personal transport.
Distracted driving in the US is a nightmare. The number of people I see clearly no paying attention to the road is horrifying. Just today I was almost hit because someone was on their phone.
We have distracted driving laws, but they aren't enforced.
The problem is that the collected fine moneys go to enrich the local police; it is hard to not see this as a protection racket.
Speeding, along with driving under the influence, are the leading causes of traffic injuries and deaths. They are easy to catch, but they aren't pointless stops.
Walking is one of my primary modes of blood sugar management. An insulin dose combined with walking leads to a much stronger response. As diabetes and other metabolic diseases are on the rise in the US, I can't help but think we should be prescribing more walking.
We should be encouraging people to walk daily. This one simple trick would have profound impacts on our metabolic dysfunction, heart disease, and cancer rates.
The Levels Health people have a lot of data on this. Taking a walk after eating a meal can blunt the blood sugar spike by upwards of 50% (depending on the food and the duration of the walk). They did a study that showed walking after drinking a can of Coke drastically cut the blood sugar spike.
He said that he thinks exercise is far more important than diet to weight loss. I thought this was a bit controversial, but according to all his anecdata, the people who actually manage to lose weight are the people that are training.
I think if you train really hard, diet can follow. But even the benefit of exercise without a strict diet seem underrated.
Edit: more thoughts
Exercise is also easier than dieting. I find it much easier to do something than to not do it. Food access is a huge issue in many places, but you should be able to walk and do some basic training no matter where you are.
1) Exercise helps with hormone regulation, including testosterone 2) Exercise improves mood, focus, and sleep, all of which help with stress eating and mindless snacking 3) Exercise builds and maintains lean tissue mass, which increases your metabolism 4) Sufficient exercise has been shown to blunt appetite (300 minutes a week)
Exercise puts you into place to be successful.
People who train daily just get so many benefits. One thing I read said you can sort of outrun a poor diet with enough exercise (combo of resistance and cardio). But, again, doing both yields really good results.
It should be better. Somehow much of europe manages to allow people the possibility to step outside and easily walk anywhere: shops; restaurants; even paths along rivers, through forests or farmland -- places that would, if in USA, be fenced off and posted with (bullet-holed) "no trespassing" signs.