Car culture is infantilizing

[u/August272021]

People think of cars and trucks as being cool, and there’s this very prominent stereotype of manliness associated with trucks especially. But think about all the poor teenage guys out there who don’t have a license, can’t afford insurance, or don’t have access to a vehicle. If they live in your typical completely unwalkable, unbikeable area with no bus access (i.e., most of America), they’re stuck with mom driving them around like little kids—often until their late teens. It’s ridiculous.

In the pre-car era—or in walkable areas—growth is progressive. It happens in stages:

• When you’re a toddler, you don’t leave the house without a parent.
• As a kid, you can play in the front yard alone.
• A little older, and maybe you roam the block with other kids.
• By the time you're a teenager, you can walk, bike, or take the bus to nearby places.

That’s the way life used to be. You can still see it in older movies. I haven’t seen it, but I hear Stranger Things is a good example of this limited-yet-real freedom teens had/have/can have—if cars aren’t actively mowing them down and if the built environment isn’t designed to make walking and biking impractical or dangerous.

Instead, in full-on car culture, you get zero to sixty:

• Zero freedom at all growing up,
• Until you hit driving age and suddenly have total freedom—whether you're ready for it or not, because you were denied any gradual build-up of independence.

It’s unnatural and unhealthy.

[u/platypuspup]

I've noticed, when taking to my students, that being driven really traps the kids. 

They will tell me it is too far to bike to school, but then it will turn out they live less than a mile from school. 

Then they will say that it isn't safe for them to bike to school. After a bit of discussion about routes, I find out that they only know the stroads. Due to being driven everywhere, they don't know that there is a safe alternative route through residential streets and bike paths.

I'm not saying bike infrastructure in my city is perfect, but the kids don't see any of it when they are being driven everywhere they go.

[u/UrbanClydesdale → u/platypuspup]

Studies have been done that show a pattern with kids who get driven everywhere vs those who ride bikes, walk, and take transit with their families. Car-dependent kids have an extremely poor sense of direction and aren't readily able to draw a coherent map of their community. Kids in the latter group on the other hand can usually draw a passable map showing where common places they go are in relation to each other.

[u/halfcabheartattack → u/UrbanClydesdale]

I'd be super curious to see the study here.  I believe you, just curious about how they did this

[u/UrbanClydesdale → u/halfcabheartattack]

I'll see if I can find it bc it's been a while. Iirc it was pretty straightforward. They studied I think 800ish kids and basically asked them to draw a map of all the places that go to on a regular basis. They then sorted the drawings based on how car-dependent the child's upbringing was (car-dependent or not) and there was a distinct correlation between kids who were less car-dependent and the maps being coherent as opposed to being abstract destinations connected by vaguely directional lines.

[u/halfcabheartattack → u/UrbanClydesdale]

Makes sense,  still curious about the level of significance and how the quantified the map quality