Why Cars Suck (Standup)
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- Опубліковано 21 вер 2024
- My new standup special UNMEDICATED is out now on Dropout! Use the code ADAM33 to get 33% a year’s subscription to Dropout! signup.dropout.tv
Come see me LIVE in a city near you: adamconover.net...
public transportation is like public libraries: they're of incredible value to society and horribly underutilized
@@Deraphim it also doesn't help that they're both culture war lightning rods in the US
You are so correct. My father was a librarian who worked in an urban area for decades. He loved to tell stories of the all strange and wonderful 'weirdos' he would encounter while working at the reference desk. Many many things got peed on by homeless people, I have a feeling that is also a strong commonality with public transit.
Not in NYC where I'm from.
I thought you were going to say “gross, smelly, full of poor people”
And corporations are good at convincing uneducated voters that they're a bad thing and a waste of money.
It's a weird time when it takes courage to say you take the bus.
In LA, yes. it's a painful experience using their metro system.
I am Spartabus
No such thing in Vienna?? Americans are just weird lmao
Having been hit by a truck at 50mph while I was walking after losing my ability to drive I relate to this video. Doesn't take courage just common sense.
Most Americans have no right to drive a car or more then 49cc motor on public property namely roads.
Got distracted at about the 5 minute mark. Just caught the "wow that was a long joke, you guys don't have ADD" coming from the phone i put down. I felt the irony.
Same lol
I actually interrupted the video to watch a couple shorts then started messing around with my laundry before getting to that line 😅 perhaps I should have taken my meds this morning
same lmao i felt called out
@@sparrow8072Always take your meds. Unless the doctor suggests otherwise, or says it's optional,
I have ADD, hyperfocus is a thing...
@@didikohen455 I have found a formula to induce it! It rocks being able to trigger it for homework
In Scotland culture is totally different. Under 22s and over 60s have free unlimited bus travel, so the only people who drive are people with families, tradespeople with vans, or those who need to drive long distances regularly. The idea of having a car just to drive in a city is quite silly. Especially after a night of drinking is everyone just expected to drive drunk or pay a £20 uber home? Weird.
God I wish we had that here :(
Yes, though taxi rides are more expensive since the homes are 20-40 km from the main city downtown you'd be drinking at, because everyone drives so homes can be bigger and farther away.
@memstoraty Yeah. But Scotland is 30k sq miles. The US is 3.8M sq miles. It's tough to have a public transportation system over such a great distance.
States and local townships do their part - but we are victims of early culture norms
that sounds grate
I am from Brazil and am amused with the possibility of the existence of people who have never taken a bus.
I LOVE driving. I have a stick shift car just to have more fun driving. But, I've discovered a commuter bus that stops in a nearby town and will drop me off a short walk from my office in the city. And it's free. And, I can leave work early, pull out my laptop on the bus, and work the rest of my day while heading home. I cannot tell you how much happier I am pulling into my driveway after the short drive from the bus stop than a long drive in rush hour commuter traffic.
Man I also LOVE driving, but not in a city. Give me an open road through the great outdoors any day. I cannot wrap my head around choosing to drive on congested streets constantly stopping when you can zone out on the bus and let someone else get you to your destination.
If only everyone had that option....
@@Montegrl Yep, if you ever need a reason to be angry at the government, let it because they're not promoting designing the city and building the infrastructure to promote other forms of transport. We (as a society) could save thousands of lives each year just by laying out the roads, paths, and tracks differently. Look for the Barcelona Superblocks for a way to very cheaply modify a grid based city into a much safer and better city.
I love driving too, but cars are so expensive so you know what I drive now? a scooter. Yeeep. I cruise along bike paths at top speed (20 mph but it feels like so much more) and if I need to go further than the range of the thing I get on the train. We got more bikes here yes but we're getting a lot more people who own their scooters now. It's been the best, those bike paths are a nature walk alongside rivers, plains, creeks, and I get to enjoy the tranquility at moderate speeds in the open air with one earbud in for tunes the other open for traffic. Frankly I'm having more fun with the scooter because i'm not stopped by crappy traffic nor do I ever need to worry about merging as much
@@spinningpeanut Most bike paths have a 10mph speed limit and no motor vehicle regulation. Did you consider that behavior like that is a nuisance to other people using the path?
R/fuckcars are gonna love this.
And I love that sub
new sub found
Here from there ...
@@Fillup82 Common r/fuckcars W
@@silverblue73 same
When people fear monger about public transportation, they're not afraid of being killed, they're afraid of human interaction.
Look. You're not wrong.
But also consider I love being able to control my environment. From climate to sound. Can't do that with public transport. I'm always way too fucking warm. Everything smells weird. I'm afraid people will think I'm looking at them. I don't feel fully safe to listen to my music or UA-cam or whatever and feel like I gotta be alert in case someone is trying to get my attention or so I don't miss my stop etc.
Also navigating transit systems is an anxiety inducing nightmare.
Plus as it stands now taking transit at best as long as it takes to take car to get to work. If I have to spend 2 hours of unpaid time commuting I want to be comfortable.
@@thesaltybeard1793
I agree with you. But those problems that you have sound like problems we dug ourselves into. Several other countries have figured out public transportation. But no country has ever figured out mass transit via cars. You're saying all of these problems that public transit may have, but nothing about how if they were fixed, if you would take public transit. Like, you can take care of sound with headphones. What if they had better climate control? What if they were cleaner, so it wasn't weird smelling? What if public transit was so optimized that even if you missed your bus, the next one was less than five minutes away? How about a phone app that does all of the worrying for you? Tells you where to go and tells you when your stop has arrived? What if like Adam spoke about, that there were enough people using public transit to actually make it safe? And public transit is only a mess to get from point A to point B, because it still has to circumnavigate through the cars. What if enough people used public transport, that made the roads more like immediate post Covid times? You've made a lot of demands, but are they really demands that couldn't be solved if we just tried? Also, even if you didn't use it out of anxiety issues, why not completely support it, to get everyone else who doesn't have your problems to get on public transport, so that you can have the roads to your anxiety self?
@@thesaltybeard1793 I mean, you can just get headphones and zone out with your music or UA-cam (that's what I do). If you're commuting by bus, then after you do the trip a couple times you won't have to be alert to everything around you, it'll become second nature (I say this after me and my commuting friend got so zoned out we forgot to pull the signal for our stop and had to stay on the bus for ten minutes while it looped around, but that shows how easy it is to zone out lol). Also it may just be me, but I also find myself much less sore after sitting on a hard bus seat than a softer car seat, because on the bus seat I can much more easily change positions and manspread a bit because there's rarely anyone close to me. I always got a sore back from long car trips, because the seat may be comfortable, but you can't change your position much.
In short, I actually look forward to my 1hr commute to work on the bus because that's peaceful zoning out time. When I drove, I never liked the (generally quicker) drive to work.
@@thesaltybeard1793 How is thinking about the next stop more stressful than driving a car through traffic? I don’t think anyone ever bothered me on a bus in years and I’m usually not even wearing headphones.
@@ArcDragoonI live in Canada, and my buses are air conditioned in the summer and heated in the winter. They're also quite clean most of the time. We have an online travel planner that can plot out your trip from point A to point B by or from x time, and it even shows you all kinds of alternative routes you could take. It tells you when the buses will arrive, when you'll be getting off, where to go between buses, and etc. The bus also has an automated system that verbally announces and displays on a screen the next stop. If you miss a bus, most of them run at 10 to 15 minute intervals, but some of the more widely used ones come every 5 minutes. And that's not even considering the train which comes every 5 to 10 minutes depending on how late it is and is also hooked into that same online travel planner. And we don't even have to hassle with tickets anymore because we have a card that fits in your wallet that you can simply load money onto by tapping it against your phone. In fact, you don't even need to bother with the card anymore if you don't want to because you can literally just tap your phone against the terminal on the bus to pay with an app. The buses and the train also share transfers, so paying for one gets you onto the other as well. You do get the odd weirdo on the bus being freaky, but they're not common, and they're probably actually more afraid of you than you are of them. Every bus stop also has a phone number that you can call to be told when the next few trips are arriving. AND you can see exactly where the bus physically is right now with an app. And this is all describing a transit system which, by the standards of this country, is often described as lacking and inefficient. I'll also note that Canada is larger than the US, supporting the point made previously that geographical size has basically nothing to do with it. I have never driven a car a day in my life, and I expect that I likely never will.
I've began living car free in LA about five years ago. The pedestrian lifestyle is a much better quality of life. I love the trains and riding my bicycle. Hopefully, we will speed up the development of our cycling infrastructure.
I think driving is so internalized that most people don't realize how many bad effects it has on them.
I stopped having a car around 25. I think my life is so much richer for it. I feel I get to live more than people trapped in their cars; see more; experience more.
I have never been a d river. But live in a smaller and more transit friendly city. Oh sure, you have guys who are. Belligerent, who keep trying to goad you into a fight, and so forth. But it works out ok.
But I thought that LA was a city where you really needed a car to have any kind of quality of life. I am glad to hear that. I was wrong. In a lot of the USA, even in cities, that really is true.
Oh, I think most people are well aware of the negative effects being a car culture has on them, they just freak out a little too much at what _good_ things they lose if they're not part of it. Like, to your average American, the idea of not being able to drive off to go on a random road trip any time the fancy takes them, is the most horrible torture they can imagine.
I tried being a bike rider in LA but this was before the e-bike revolution, and i lived in the hills. It was too hard getting home every day, and of course drivers in LA specifically want to murder you for daring to not also be miserable like them in a car.
I am pretty sure the idea of public transportation in the US was shut down early on when car manufacturers pushed the product.
Then it just became the norm.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
The problem with the norm is so few people ever question it
The car industry conspired to undermine public transportation
💯
"No no no, ma'am, you go back to your novel"
i'm dead
And from the guy who just said he's not a hero...
DARIA!
I only drive cars when I have to at work. Bicycle, bus, tram, trains, metro, just walking. And the city I live "only" has 500k population. I live in Germany.
Oh yeah! DB is the best!
@@SuperMopga I personally wouldn't go that far but yes reliable enough public transport rocks.
Right? I live in Germany too. Bike is my main means of transport (and yes, I have kids, and for them a bike is a main transport too). It was very funny to listen to typical perception of a bus by LA people 😂
If it took you 30 minutes to walk to the nearest store, would you still say that?
Im jealous of you guys in europe, there is just no way to get places in 99 percent of US cities without a car. It would take me hours to go to the grocery store if I didnt have one.
How will everyone know how cool I am if I can't make vroom vroom sounds at them with my car?
Real
People will judge you for making vroom vroom sounds at them with your car, and they will not judge you as cool. Ask me how I know...
I am a MAN, my life has to be as hard and inconvenient as possible so that other men can be afraid of me and women can feel safe in my masculine aura.
Tesla.
No such thing as cars, but second mortgages on wheels.
For me it's my only mortgage. Oh but wait I bought it used for cheap and now I don't pay rent yay
@@lunaumbra5179no one cares about how smart you think you are
@@aluisious I'm not smart. I'm just happy being a nomad
@@lunaumbra5179 I'm glad being a nomad works for you, but living out of your car is not a real solution to the exponential combined costs of housing and transportation in the US.
@@Shibouu59 I do not disagree. Cars the way they are used today sucks and I hope more people ditch them. But also minimalist living is far superior, even if your home is planted in the ground. Ditch consumerism, hoarding, excess water consumption. Focus on sharing, breathing, observation.
But none of that will fix today's problem.
Imagine meeting Adam Conover on the bus... "Go on, ruin something for me!" :P
Adam Ruins Masturbating On Public Transit
Oh you’re so right - i wish man - he is awesome
The monkeys paw grants your wish: You meet him and suddenly your carrot polishing session is ruined by him staring at it.
?????@@placeholdername0000
I left the first reply on this comment but UA-cam hid it for including the M-word, and now I'm apparently subscribed to replies anyway with no way to cancel. Thanks UA-cam!
(The comment was "Adam Ruins M--turbation".)
I never learned to drive..i walk, take the bus, and rideshare. Luckily work is a mile from my place.
People look down on me for not driving.
I look up to you for having the luck of being able to live within a mile of your work.
If I didn’t have to drive to work I wouldn’t own a car. I have a motorcycle, that’s more freedom than a car anyway. Even a very expensive motorcycle costs less than a car. My bike insurance is 15% what my car insurance is.
@@carultchIts a caregiving job.
How dare you never pay a ton of money on a 4 wheel expense every month.
Yup, people have looked down on me too. A set of car keys doesn't make anybody superior.
I feel like a large part of the issue is that for many people you don't even have the choice. For example, the area I live in, we *do* have bus transportation here. But it is incredibly limited to the point where if you have a job you're going to have to be extremely early or late to work (assuming the bus even takes you there to begin with).
I used to work with a guy who would boast that he, "never took the bus and never worked in fast food," etc. He also refused to tip the guys who delivered his lunch every day. Remember the adage about paying attention to how people treat servers and clerks? Mm. Your friends will get over it.
Honestly, I think we all just witnessed Adam lay the foundation for something monumental. This feels like the beginning of a game-changing moment in history. And you know, I never thought I'd change my opinion about public transportation, but now I'm starting to see just how inefficient our current reliance on cars for short local trips has become. LA is a NIGHTMARE
He's not laying the foundation, the foundation has existed, plenty of people have been talking about it, especially among Urbanist groups. Adam is just another person to bring attention the idea that there are much better ways to move people.
@@justsomeitweeb and this isn't the first time Adam has talked about it either.
His comedic delivery is gold. What got me sold on the idea
I went from driving almost exclusively for ten years to moving to LA, losing two cars to hit and runs, and am car free and love it. I've made frowns and have had such great experiences on metro, group bike rides, group roller skating, and even taking Metrolink commuter rail. I hope more people just try a trip or two a week without their cars and see what it's like, and advocate for more transit! Streets for All and Streets Are For Everyone are two groups in LA doing a lot of work to make LA and California more transit oriented.
@@notoriousglez8180 You've clearly never watched "Adam Ruins Everything."
One reason I plan to leave the USA is because the public transportation sucks. In my experience, in various cities, about one fourth of the time a scheduled bus either never shows up or is more than 20 minutes late. The safety issue doesn’t concern me. It is the reliability that is the problem. I can depend on my car getting me to where I’m going 100% of the time. The bus? 75% of the time.
It's one of the things that makes public transit different in other places beyond just the public perception. In the places like the Netherlands and Germany, a bus is considered late if it's more than about 5 minutes. And in the Netherlands, many stops have electronic ride boards (more if it's a stop that multiple vehicles can stop at simultaneous) that show the next 10 things (many stops handle multiple modes) arriving at the stop with estimated time of arrival, delays, or others and it's updated more or less in real time.
Not only that, but given how many transit stops are around, that are multi-mode, and the layout of the network, in a city like Amsterdam, even if there is an obstruction, instead of an entire line being shut down, buses and trams can be re-routed (and still get you to where you want to go) or be used to bypass the issue if it's affecting the metro.
On top of all that, with a reduction in cars and car infrastructure, car driving is more pleasant and safer (for drivers and pedestrians and cyclists) and you rarely get car traffic jams because the people that are driving are the ones that need to specifically for work or want to. Cars become an option not a necessity.
Which really is the key foundation there. It's not that cars are a necessity - it's that commuting and traveling are.
_Heavy rush hour traffic has entered the chat_
This is also why I don't ride the bus. Except that I can't afford a car so I need to ride my bike everywhere instead.
"Buses are so expensive" says a person in debt because they had to get a Ford pickup for their 6 person family so they also need a second car
The fact about the insurance is literally insane. Never thought about it before...
it gets even worse lol, the people everyone pays by law to help you financially recover from such a tragedy are payed specifically to do EVERYTHING IN THEIR POWER TO AVOID PAYING YOU, insurance companies make billions of dollars each year, only 68 percent of their revenue actually goes to people in need of this money, if it should be mandatory it should not be privatised, in the end if you could just simply save that money you would be like 38% better off and you wouldn't have to jump through as many if any hoops at all to get the money you need to recover from such a tragedy, i fucking hate insurance as a concept! like politics, death, and taxes, the fundamental concept is interesting, perhaps good even, but the sickening sludge of context it exists in makes it grotesque and actively pushes people away, think about it, politics fundamentally is just a conversation about how we should make the world better, taxes is just a collective fund, a symbol of human unity towards a common goal of making the world a better place, it's organised sleek and beautiful, it allows you to be a part of something bigger, death is an ending, a great bow, a final goodbye, it's a moment that can have immense meaning and value, sadly politics has evolved into a pointless slug fest where nothing gets done and people's lives get ruined your taxes fuel pointless wars and political corruption, and death is rarely if ever chose in hernest, there's always context that forces your hand, you don't get to live a full life you are forced to compress all of life into such a short span of time because you know your choices will be taken from you eventually, it all sucks so bad, but in the end the foundation itself isn't terrible, insurance as a concept isn't bad, it's the organised labor the people towards helping the victims of a tragedy, it's empathy manifest! YET WE CORRUPT IT WITH GREED! i don't want this world to end, but i find it hard to find anything worth saving. we need to fix this world so it's all worth saving.
@@rexr0b0twars80 I think you might be unwell. You should talk to someone, if possible. Show your distress, your insecurity etc. openly and people will surprise you.
The world just might not be as dark as you paint it in your comment.
@@jakobbauz it's mostly that dark cause i was only refering to the dark stuff there, that was the subject matter, how could i have ever segwayed into twinkies lmao, to me the world is as dark as it is bright, hope and despair are in great abundance on this planet, and they can both be ugly and beautiful, when it comes down to it i'm fine, i've made peace with this fucked up world, it is a wonderful planet but it's not wonderous enough, it can be so much better, i'm simply an intensely insatiable sort of person, humanity has done a lot of good but more needs to be done, i'm simply pointing out it's importance.
Cars are four wheeler coffins.
Then a bus is a mass grave?
You can't have nearly as much fun in a coffin. I'd gladly not drive any daily commutes if my city could support it but I'd still drive for fun on the weekends, it would be even better in a world other ppl didn't clog the roads for regular driving either
Even more so when their SUV and puck up America size
Alsp can we past regulations o them also expand the regulations we hace on other cars to them no exemptions to SUV and Pick Up
@@lunaumbra5179 buses are 20-50 times safer than personal vehicles. Analogy does not check out
I agree 100% you
I currently live in a place I can't viably get anywhere without driving, so I spend thousands of dollars annually maintaining a car that spends most of its time sitting in a driveway.
Back when I lived in a city, though, during my first "real job", a lot of people were confused about me preferring to spend $70 a month on a transit pass over spending ~$400 a month on a car and a place to put it near the office.
Problem is this isn't always guranteed to be cheaper. The commuter trains to Chicago where I live are outrageously expensive at $9 a ticket. Meaning just one trip to and from is $18 and if I got a monthly pass it'd be $250.
@@SomethingSpecial.The estimated cost of owning and regularly operating a car, via gas, maintenance, insurance, and so on totals to an average of around $12,000 a year in the US.
At $250 a month, choosing to use that train to get to where you need to go is a better deal by far. You could pay for four monthly tickets a month, throw three of them away, and you would still save ~$1500 a year.
You don't even need to go completely car free. If you're living with someone else, a partner, parents/guardians, even a close enough roommate, you can save a ton of money by reducing a two car household down to one and just taking a train whenever carpooling isn't an option.
@@SomethingSpecial.
1. If I recall Chicago correctly (it's been a long while since I was there), the roads to and from there are generally tolled and outrageously slow. So driving in ain't even close to free either.
2. What train are you talking about? The $9 you quoted is more than the CTA website says it charges for any rail trips.
@@thexalon South Shore line. It's a rail that connects South Bend Indiana to Chicago.
I also currently live in a place where I can't viably get anywhere without driving, except that I can't afford a car. So I have to risk my life riding my bike whenever I need to go anywhere. Yay.
That's why I loooove big cities in Europe. I can walk ANYWHERE and the sites are beautiful.
My napkin math estimates that the USA spends roughly one trillion dollars a year on cars and car related expenses (both public and private).
I wish I could take public transportation. Where I live, you can either drive or use your phone to hire a stranger to drive for you. Talk about unnecessary risks.
"Hello, person I just met. Here's my home address. How could this ever go wrong?"
As a transit planner and car free multi modal enthusiast I approve of this message. I have been screaming the safety issue til my face turns blue but people just don’t get it.
I live in New York, so many people take the train here it's considered weird to drive a car in the city unless you're coming from out of state
In the city, it's weird unless you're rich. But southern Brooklyn, most of Queens and the Bronx all have plenty of cars. We need more transit in these areas.
"No one drove in New York, there was too much traffic." -Futurama
Lemme just say, I've got that "really hard to make me laugh" autism and im dead silent while watching most comedy specials, but this one had me rolling back and forth with laughter.
I saw the whole thing on Dropout! Good special overall but the Car part was my favorite.
What whole thing and where is it free to watch?
@@Ewr42 This video that Adam posted is an excerpt of an almost hour long Stand-up Comedy special: “Unmedicated” on Dropout. Dropout is a good streaming service with a lot of great comedy based content and comedy specials like “Breaking News”, “Um, Actually” and “Make Some Noise” among others. I’d recommend it personally.
That part where you see a deadly car crash and just keep driving along in your car is so disturbing…
You mean like this big rig? One that actually reacts to the crash? ua-cam.com/video/UVtmlEEU-lo/v-deo.html
As a Swiss watching this whose 31 and doesn't have a drivers license because I've always taken the train/bus/tram wherever I needed, this is so alien to me this culture in America with its cars... 🧐
It's the massive difference in population density and the sheer size of the United States, which despite its differences, is still largely a single culture. I can travel over 3500 km and it won't feel much different from home. If you travelled that far, you'd be in Portugal, Morocco, Greece, Romania, visiting Ariel and Sebastian, or at Russia's front door.
There are large swaths of largely unpopulated land here, even not very far from dense metro areas. There are relatively populated rural areas near industrial towns with a dozen houses in a mile, but it's still wooded enough that many houses have no line-of-sight to a neighbor. And everything in-between that and cities more dense than Geneva.
The world thinks they understand the US culture because our media is so popular everywhere, but they mostly see depictions of our city life, where the density is not that dissimilar from most of Europe. But without living here, it's hard to grasp just how far apart things are once you get away from the immediate East Coast and how broadly even our cities sprawl. Granted, a lot of that sprawl was caused by automobile culture, but the vast amount of land available per person led to us adopting such a strong attachment to a miracle machine that enabled us to take advantage of it. We were already spreading out into it, but the Industrial Revolution nearly killed most rural American towns until the automobile showed up; when cars became widely affordable, people who had grown up in peaceful rural areas liked earning a better living than they could farming, but never really liked living in the noisy, crowded city, and ironically, cars were making them even noisier by the day!
@@bloodgain That's nonsense. The population density of the US isn't actually that low. Norway has a much lower population density than the US, but far better public transportation. The same is true for Russia, Canada, etc.
I live in Nova Scotia where we had a train system that run from Yarmouth to Sydney and we decommissioned it and turned it into trails for ATVs to ride on. Now if you want transit you have to live in the city or have a car to drive you to the bus stop if you are rural.
My quality of life since getting rid of my car 10-15 years ago has gone through the roof. Walking, biking, and public transit are all so much easier, less expensive, and frankly more interesting than driving.
"The more you drive, the less intelligent you are."
Miller is my hero.
I took the bus for a month to work. On a car, it would take 30-45 minutes total both ways. On the bus, it took 2-3 hours everyday. Buses ran every hour and the driver assumed showing anytime in the hour was fine. Bus routes take you a central location and then to your destination. If you have a connection, and when buses don't run on time and run every hour, you could wait up to 2 hours for a 15-20 minute car ride. The bus tracking apps constantly lie where the buses are. When the bus is late, it disappears off the tracking. You can't really work on the bus since you'll get motion sickness. Best is you can get a nap in and get the phone GPS to warn you when you get close to your stop. I didn't have to be on a specific time for work and so it was fine taking the bus but it ate up all my extra time after work when I took the bus. But, being on the bus for 30 minutes to work was great. Everything else sucked about the bus.
I think that's kinda the point... the more people use public transportation, the better it gets. You wouldn't have to deal with the long wait times in Europe.
Loved the bus, except for having to leave an hour, or more, early to get where I needed.
HEy for 20,000 dollars and a decade of gasoline and maintenance you can drive yourself and get there 30 minutes sooner......................
There’s two sides to this; on a systemic level transit needs to be made faster through investments like bus lanes, signal priority, and more frequent service. On an individual level, we need to strive to take transit when we can so ridership justifies investment. When transit doesn’t work for you, write your electeds. Even a short email to your state reps saying “I want better public transportation” has an effect.
Who you gonna call?
Ghost busses
The people who died in their cars, can't get far without the bus
@@iGame3D
🎵 The people who died 🎶
🎵 In their cars 🎶
🎵 Could not get far 🎶
🎵 Without _Ghost Buses_ 🎶
Downtown L.A. once had the most efficient public transportation system on the planet. The "big three" (GM, Ford, Chrysler) lended the city the money to rip it all up and start building the highway system. when the scheme was exposed in a court of law the judge fined each of the companies $1,000 each. The individual perpetrators were fined $1 each. Look it up.
That's disgusting. I think that repeated itself in every major American city though
How much did the lawyers make?
The bicycle is a tool for better living. F cars!
Need to convert some inner city roads to carless roads.
I learned to fly airplanes, sailplanes, and helicopters in my youth. What a joy and challenge to learn. There are no borders to see when one is up in the air, and the only real hazard is to avoid running into birds, not some drunkard careening down the highway straight at you. That's what freedom feels like to me. Unfortunately, I was forced to get a driver's license at 26 years of age as a work requirement, but in my free time, I only ride bikes. Now that I'm retired, I never expect to see myself, ever again, yoked to the wheel of a metal coffin ravaging the environment. To be fair, if we all were forced to pay the true cost for all the damage the automobile has caused, gas would be prohibitively expensive -- say over $100/gallon.
Sadly, my city's public transportation isn't very good, fast, or reliable. And it saddens me that I can state this without doxing myself.
Mine only got a public transit system this year connecting it to the rest of the region.
Haha? You live in the GTA, I bet. Or LA. Or -you know what you're right. Easier to say where you don't live than where you do xD
That description describes basically every city except NYC and maybe DC and San Francisco. And even they have major problems with transit.
I have ADHD-PI, but also weirdly fast reflexes in emergencies. I drove professionally for 7 years. My one takeaway is to leave lots of following distance. You have no way of knowing what the person ahead of you will think is a good idea to do while driving! 😰
i've been on a city bus that was hit by a pickup truck. the reason city buses don't have seatbelts is because it's not necessary. that guy hit a stopped bus at 30 miles an hour and all any of us inside the bus did was _hear_ it.
Saw a buss hit by a semi.... Not the same result.
I was actually reading a story about a woman being burned on a Delta airplane by coffee, conjuring up the McDonald's coffee lawsuit, when I got this notification. And I just wanted to thank you for actually trying to educate us about that case because it certainly helped me realize there was a lot more to the story. And I'm sure this Delta thing is no different.
I mean delta is shit.
Air travel shouldn't be so liberally taken. It's incredibly destructive to the natural environments the paths fly over. The sound pollution literally fucks with breeding habits and such of animals.
And all the "sounds of the city" are literally just cars. And studies show that exposure to this sound - regardless of how someone thinks they feel about it - drives up anxiety and stress hormones like a mother fucker in humans. Can't imagine it's great for animals.
The cities we've built are built for machines not for people to live.
I WISH the bus was just $1.75
It literally is in most places. Only time you pay more than that is if you take a greyhound or something.
It should be free in the way roads are, ie subsidized by taxes
@@ChadOfAllChads in my city bus fare is $3.
Check to see if there’s a frequent rider program in your city. Most cities have a monthly plan which costs about a tank of gas a month. Also, if it’s a college town, see if you can get a temporary ID from the college, as most college students ride free. And if none of that is available, talk to your city councilors and see if you can get one to put a referendum up for more frequent ridership. Most public transit programs are funded based on ridership numbers, so bumping those numbers up is in their interests.
@@sarahwbs About 2 dollars where I live, .50 cents fr youth and seniors.
Yay for public transportation. :D
Also school kids survive school buses, isn't that public transportation too.
Urbanist comedy is something I can get behind.
Absolutely!
As someone who hates driving, I love how vocal you are about this topic! The only freedom we have is which car note we want to get into debt for... Wish we had trains like in Japan!
I am impressed with this standup; I was not expecting it to be funny! Very well done!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks for saying that Adam, I have ADD and a year after getting my driver's license I just stopped driving, I knew I was a menace to me and others, it's the sane thing to do.
I've been super self-conscious about all the things ASD makes difficult for me to do but driving is one of the biggest. I feel like a small child when I tell people I don't even have a license in my 30's. Really appreciate seeing someone I respect make a similar decision with confidence.
@@David-ln8qh I'm 39, nothing to feel embarrassed about. Sure, society always expects certain things, like having a licence, but hopefully with age there comes a no BS attitude, like for me I'm just "I don't, so what? Here's why. But still, so what?"
“Wow, that was a long joke, you guys don’t have ADHD” 😂😂😂😂
oh Adam, don’t worry, I do
I used to take the bus when it was a straight run from home to work.
Unfortunately, my 13 minute commute would take three hours by public transportation. There's just no direct route despite it being a single freeway exit from my home.
That is such an awful truth. 45 minute drive to jury duty is going to take me three hours by bus. They pay $16 a day.
A good part of the reason I moved to Italy was to get away from the car-centric city planning of the US. I haven't driven since leaving. I can walk everywhere. I can ride a bike if I want to further/faster or carry more. I can have things delivered if I really need to. I can take the train all over and walk when I get there. It's fantastic!
All of this is the result of city design. The US built itself to separate residential zones from everything else. In most parts of the use, there are no corner stores in your neighborhoods. No restaurants. No cafes. No destinations for the kids. Etc.
This guy is so fucking funny. I knew he could write a sketch but stand up is something else entirely and this is exceptional.
DEAR LORD the cut to the centered low angle at "I look right at it" absolutely killed me
As a Detroiter I apologize to all of you for inflicting the car on the rest of the world.
Don't feel too bad, I literally work for an auto manufacturer, and I gave up driving 10yrs ago and love my bus ride to work where I make over-priced luxury SUV's for over-paid middle manager douchebags!
It's okay you have legal marijuana now, you are redeemed.
This set came at the perfect time
This was really really funny Adam. Really well done.
This is why I'm glad I never had a car. Never even rented one. 34 years old and never took my drivers test. Don't have a license. I cycle everywhere ( except doctors appointments, someone else drives me there ). I have diabetes, kidney disease, and heart disease, all genetic except for the first one, which I got due to medication. And yet, I'm healthier than I should be, all because I don't have a car. And more physically fit. When you can cycle 80-90 miles in 13 hours ( breaks included ), you'd think you'd be.
i find this very cathartic to hear
car-thartic!
I ride a bicycle because of my ADHD. Which is also why I wish we had bike lanes. Because when my attention starts to drift away, my bike will often slowly creep into the road. All it'd take is one inattentive driver driving by at the same time my attention veers off and my life could be over. I also cannot take the bus to work because the ONLY public transportation in the town where I work is a single commuter rail station on the opposite end.
We need an infrastructure that isn't only built for one mode of transportation.
Thank you saying and posting this. I don’t drive, I’ve been extremely afraid to all my life with a scary experience when I was 15 being taught by a terrible Diver’s Ed teacher (who should’ve never been allowed) which has scared me for life with PTSD. I’ve always been very ashamed that I don’t since it seems everyone has a license. There are SOOOOOO many I see everyday even as a pedestrian that should never be allowed to operate a vehicle. I thank you so much Adam since it eases the stigma for me a little bit.
You took driver's training at 15 yrs old!? I thought you had to be at least 16 in most places to get your license, and that is dangerously young to be trusting someone with 2 tons of speeding metal.
I love my bicycles have absolutely no desire to drive a car
I like what he's doing here. It's perfect.
I rode the bus for many years but ya know, motion sickness cut that short. Not everyone is dealing with the same challenges. It's an invisible problem that controls how much you can travel and commute. ❤
I feel this deeply in my soul. The moment for me when I decided was talking to a therapist and explaining I was anxious to drive because of ADD and I didn't want to have an accident when I lost focus (was very close to happening a few times already sigh) and he's like "Well? Why wouldn't you. You're driving a 2 ton death trap at 80 km an hour that's scary." and I'm like YOU'RE RIGHT. IT IS. THIS IS BULLSHIT. 😂
Good for you, going carless. I've been carless for over 2 years, and it's life changing. I don't have a reliable bus here (my "city" likes to play the "too small" card), but I wish we did. I rely mostly on biking. Surprisingly effective for most things, though I definitely feel a little trapped when I want to visit other places. Still, my level of happiness is substantially higher in average and I have a better understanding of weather patterns and how to dress appropriately. It's incredible!
I remember an Adam Ruins Everything episode talking about the automobile industry and the introduction of the word jaywalker. It didn't kick off my car free lifestyle, but it started laying the foundation. I appreciate your work - the communication, the education, the comedy, everything. Thank you. Keep on being awesome!
In the US, there is driver retraining if you get enough speeding tickets. But that's about it.
I love using the bus. It's cheap, I don't have to worry about traffic or maintenance, and they're help me with my groceries. I just wish they could go beyond the county lines.
Adam still hasn't changed all those years ago from Adam Ruins Everything blasting cars. What a freaking legend.
"upwards of 3 hours a day trapped in our tiny metal boxes"... thank God for WFH.
6:45 in fairness there are advantages to cars, it’s just that they’re selfish. Some people value being able to go wherever they want whenever they want as quickly as they want over [insert every advantage of public transportation Adam mentions in the routine]
Well, if you live in a massive city you're gonna get traffic jams. For those of us who don't, we don't.
Huh I don't know why we have cars now that I actually looked this: you are approximately 3,287 times more likely to die in a fatal car accident compared to a fatal bus accident as a passenger.
I have jave been a huge fan of your work for years. This was the first time that I've seen your stand-up work. I am an even BIGGER fan now. Thank you!
I quit driving, too!! I live in Phoenix, and its been a major lifestyle shift, and people also act weird about it sometimes to me. I take the bus and ride my bike (never in the same trip now since a bike of mine got stolen from the bus rack, so I refuse to use it anymore), and my commute is now often the best part of my day. I like cycling, I like walking, I like riding the bus (when it's remotely on schedule, but jf there was less traffic the drivers wouldn't always be late so it's not their fault). I always hated having to drive, and then one day I realized that I didn't actually need to do it, I had simply been convinced I had to drive by other people who were also misled into believing the same. Buses, cycling, and 15 minute cities are the future! Be the change you wanna see! ❤
Of COURSE Adam Conover is a fan of public transportation who realizes that car culture is insane in this country. Why would I expect any different, as a fellow 'bus rider' myself, happy to hear it. :)
Don't mind me! Just waiting for Dropout to restore Adam Ruins Everything to its rightful place: existing
I fucking hate driving, also because of ADHD, but my grandfather is the worst backseat driver and I feel my blood pressure go up ever time he tells me to watch the light, or to start breaking when I'm already slowing down. Anyway, I am learning how to drive because as nice as the bus is for me it would be hell trying to cart him around like that.
This country needs to set itself up to be more like Amsterdam. Where public transportation is king. Parking garages for bicycles, along with trams, trains and buses to get around town. Where the routes to get across town on bicycle is just as fast as a car
@@DMetallicat81 Why set the bar that low? Rising sealevels are a thing you know ...
@@TheBayru that is the opposite of "setting the bar low".
@@TheBayru We are in a period where both political parties don't believe in climate change. Getting society to even accept more public transportation is big. Until cold fusion is widely available we still have to ramp up green energy production. Natural gas is a worse green house gas than CO2. As a country we won't give up ethanol because we as a country produce and subsidized corn instead of growing food that we need and allow big corporations to bleed the farmers dry
@@DMetallicat81 It was a joke, because Amsterdam is below sea level ... But it was also not a joke because if you look at streets like Herengracht, you can see car is definitely still king, as parkingspace takes up more than half of the public space there. It's still very much aimed at everyone owning a car; there are better examples.
@@TheBayru People still own cars in Amsterdam, but compared to a US city like New York or Los Angeles. Cars don't have need to get around the city like they do here. You don't see parking garages for only bikes in Cities here in the US. Where when the snow falls bikes are put away. The UA-cam channel Not Just Bikes talks about how Amsterdam is still moving towards a city with less dependence of cars. America, if you ride a bike for transportation you can be mocked, Cities like Amsterdam, not even 2nd guessed
I had the privilege of visting Tokyo early this year, and experiencing firsthand how much more convenient, and easy, and healthy, and just outright safer a well developed public transport system is made me so much more mad at car-centric civic design in the US.
Genius! Greetings from over the pond, from the place where are lots of bicycles, even more then people.
Goedenavond!
The real problem is in the size of city you live in. I've lived in a college town, Chicago, and a Colorado Springs. Chicago mass transit is so great - get anywhere in a decent amount of time almost any time of day. I never felt a need for a car. The college town, a few meandering bus routes that take you an hour to get anywhere, and only during business hours. Colorado Springs, where the town gets bigger by spreading out instead of up, and a few meandering bus routes that take you an hour and a half to get anywhere, and only during business hours. It's nearly impossible to function here without a car. One side of town to the other is an insane amount of time by car.
I'd take the bus if there was a stop nearby, but those are miles away... like hours of walking. NOPE.
Adam left out the one truly major and horrific potential outcome of a bus accident.
I was in one myself recently -- I thought we had just *witnessed* a traffic accident until the driver pulled over and let us know we were actually *in* it -- but the seriousness of the situation did not become apparent until a police officer arrived on scene, took down the passengers' names and ages (nothing else, no ID verification or any of that nonsense), and asked if anyone had been injured...
And one joker in the back just *had* to pipe up and moan "my neck hurts!"
And that's when we all knew that that bus wasn't gonna be going *anywhere* for a looo-ooong time!
SOMEONE has clearly never had an addict try to bite them or have a derelict make them late to work because they were broke and " if they need to go somewhere that bad they will pay for me" instead of the driver calling the cops, or have panhandleers attack them them for saying "I'm not giving you money" ( all of these things happened to ME all the damn time when I had to take the bus to work almost daily, Adam!!!!!!)
My god that was good. Also, in some places with trains, there are Women-Only cars to combat the masturbators, so we should all be yelling at our local officials at the top of our lungs to give us high speed rail already
OMG Adam, you have no idea what this bit means to me. I'm visually impaired and I have to take the bus in Tulsa Oklahoma... imagine. Love you for this, truly.
Adam is killing it
I like this guy a lot
I have a Toyota Corolla and car insurance... yet no health insurance, soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohelpmeoooooooooooooooooooooo
Step 1, write a script. Step 2, make a video. Step 3, post to UA-cam for profit.
@@zacharythomas8617 Uh... you lost buddy?
Oh good. Adam Conover is not dead. Just his Adam Ruins Everything show.☺️
Genius material is all I can say
6:00 He missed the bit where the vast majority of people are *mad* that they are now 20+ minutes late for a job they don't want to even want to do!
I spent 6 years as an OTR trucker across the 48. Up in those cabs your line of sight naturally falls right into people's vehicles below you. The things truckers see other people doing in their very lethal weapons at 60mph+ is just absurd. WAY too many people feel WAY too comfortable behind the wheel.
This was surprisingly a lot funnier than I expected.
I'm a fan of riding buses, trains, and bicycles. The trains and buses around me just don't go anywhere I want to go daily. Cars would not be my top choice for commuting or getting around town.
Commuting sucks. Driving is fantastic. I know it seems silly, but I love public transit as the day to day Commuting system, but when you can find an abandoned piece of tarmac with hills, curves, and no one to slow you down it gives one goosebumps
Competent public transpiration is rare or nonexistant in most of America. My state has like 2 cities that might have a bus system.
It's pretty important to _have_ a car if you live in a small town. Hell, if you're in the countryside, there's likely no bus between your home and the nearest hospital or supermarket. But it's soooo easy to just take your car EVERYWHERE when you got one that people that can afford to have a car just won't think about going places any other way. The ones that do are "fitness" people like me who like to jog or bike.