Say what you will about the ills of the car, but it takes a lot of specific context for them to emerge as the worst option of transport from an individual perspective. Really most of the cars ills are from their collective harms, something most can't appreciate as a tragedy of the commons sort of failing.

If I believed there is a crisis of isolation in the United States and degradation of community, I would first focus on more recent technologies, say ones introduced around 2007, than on technologies introduced in the early 1900s.

In my grandfather's day, one income was enough to support a household, and there was less free work being done on the job, which meant fewer hours and being less drained at the end of the day. And yes, people spent less time commuting, meaning they had more time and energy for socializing after work. But communities were also more decentralized, and population centers had fewer people in general. A big part of the problem is that modern cities can be massive, and invariably funnel people to a handful of work districts, which just doesn't scale. When you double the distance to the CBD, you quadruple the number of people coming in (give or take, it's not exact because we tend to increase density close to the CBD as a response to this). Take it from someone who's lived in a place where cars aren't really necessary, the logistics of urbanization are still a crap experience when you're crammed into a train carriage during rush hour. It's common for people to commute for 90 minutes on public transport in Asian megacities, for example.

> The upsides of automobiles generally all exist outside of the 'personal automobile', i.e. logistics. These upsides and downsides don't need to coexist. We could reap the benefits without needing to suffer for it, but here we are.

other than as a claim we should not have personal automobiles.

Parking is one of the biggest upsides of bikes IMO.

Buses are only workable because of cars. We build roads for cars first and trucks second. Buses are at most 3rd in the list and getting to use them is an incidental side benefit.

No one builds enough roads for buses. They have to use the roads built for cars.

This is a big claim with no justification.

Cars have dynamic traction control, internal temperature control, etc. You may get frost bite on your bicycle, but almost certainly not in your car. Having four wide wheels makes the vehicle radically more stable.

Add seat belts, air bags, etc. cars have far more safety features than a bike can.

Of course, cars go faster and going faster increases lethality at the limit. No argument there, far more people die in cars in general. But specifically concerning weather, cars allow people to do many things that a bicycle cannot.

Not to mention general comfort. Being in a bike in a snow storm is very unpleasant!

Extreme hot weather and pollution are both a much bigger health risk for bikes than cars.

What does this mean? This feels a bit like a distinction without a difference, as the infrastructure built is shared by both.

> although school children here will happily pedal 10km to school and back on the daily

How flat is it there? I can’t imagine a typical kid biking 10km each way around me. I feel like the average kid at my kids’ school would take 45 minutes or more to bike that distance.