What also contributes to <18 (and the elderly) social isolation is the car-centric urban planning which denies mobility freedom to this demographics. This is even more relevant in North America
Agreed. What's next: If I am enslaved and my expectation is being paid for my work, I must change my expectation? Fuck that.
What we must do is maintain the expection, fight however you can to change reality and crucially learn how to live with this dissonance, don't let this stress consume you .
The NHS has also been deliberately weakened by the Tory (and Labour) to justify its privatization. That is the crucial point. The unusual seasons would just be a small extra burden if they had not weakened it.
The car infrastructure built to provide you that comfort has very big negative externalities to others. Among them:
1/ The massive amount of space dedicated to cars, taken away from pedestrians and cyclists. Cars are the most space-inefficient way of moving people around, if anything they should be the _least_ prioritized in public space allocation.
2/ Streets become hostile places to pedestrians, to children, to communities. Why do children not play outside anymore? No, its not the phones+internet, its the cars. Phones+internet are symptoms. Streets have been made into traffic sewage.
3/ Economics. If you need a 1500kg / 15000$ machine to carry a 70kg adult to a nearby grocery store, then there is something fundamentally wrong with your city planning. Alternatives should be there by default: walking and cycling infra is the solution. Cars were meant to give us freedom, it seems they took it away from us.
4/ Air pollution. EVs will partially solve it and no I am not going to wait for them, many micro particles PM are from tires wear and tear and engine (I dont have full details).
5/ Inclusivity. Cars are only for adults 18+. Children and teens have no mobility freedom. They are hostage to their parents to go from A to B. American suburbs are the most teen boredom place for a reason. Elderly and disabled are also restricted. Cycles are much more inclusive to all these groups. And cycle infra is not only for bicycles: its for mobility chairs, three-wheeld cycles, basically any humans-on-wheels vehicle.
This is not about bicycles, its about civil rights issue. Bicycles just happen to be one of (the preferred, the most visible?) method of traveling at a human scale.
