https://news.sky.com/story/i-paid-numerous-fines-after-leavi...
The way I see it sure you can go everywhere using a less than ideal transport option and manage if you must. But.. why?
Rain here is a fact of life, similar to the UK or Vancouver, Orlando or the Amazon Rainforest. Everyone who uses a bike for transportation here has a good rain jacket. And to put things in perspective, the normal rain seen in the Netherlands is more of a light drizzle and it generally comes in fits and spurts as moist air is pushed inland from the ocean. If you can afford to wait an hour, the rain is probably stopped.
Also, getting to the airport with a bike in the Netherlands is fine! There are nice protected bicycle lanes, a nice parking garage, good connections to neighboring infrastructure and you can always bring your bike down to the train platform if you need to go a bit further. When you live in a country that prioritizes cycling infrastructure, taking a bike is the practical, cheapest, and often fastest way to reach your destination.
Now to end on a point of more agreement, I agree with you that the demonization of AC in much of Europe is silly. Nobody is upset that in Bangkok or Tokyo that every building has AC. For some reason a certain type of European just doesn’t want to adapt and they will fight tooth and nail to prevent others from utilizing their own economic means in order to stay comfortable in their own homes. My home has solar panels and during the summer they produce much more power than I can utilize at one given moment anyway so if I want to run my AC at 400W during the peak heatwave that should be of no concern to anyone.
Clothes are not really an ideal solution compared to surrounding yourself with a 4,000 pound piece of machinery that costs $50,000, loses half its value in 3 years, and degrades your mental and physical health.
It’s better to just get in your tanklet. Your little oasis. Home away from home.
That’s how i move nowadays from most point As to Bs. Music, AC, glasses. Perfect privacy. Calmness. Peace.
Kilograms of metal between you and the vicious, antagonistic reality of 2026 AD
It’s not just a car. It is an armor for the times like these.
I'm a lot more scared of car crashes, since in most years they kill more people in the US than firearms do [1], and that's a pretty morbid statistic considering 58% of firearm deaths are suicides. [2] In other words, all those bullets flying at you as you walk down the street are less than half as deadly as driving in your vehicle.
I would encourage you to look in your local newspaper/news website and see how often someone loses their teenager in a car crash versus how often someone loses their teenager to violence on the street. I didn't lose any classmates to violence, but I lost at least one classmate to a car crash.
Here's another exercise: stand at a sidewalk at a traffic light intersection and count how many people in cars are actively on their phones.
The most statistically dangerous thing that happens to people walking is being hit by cars.
Somehow I doubt the Dutch are staring at each other with violent eyes and wishing they could cower away from the sidewalk into the safety of their RAM 1500 Crew Cabs. I struggle to imagine how that would happen: you can't even stare at people as you ride by them in the bike lanes in the Netherlands, the cyclists are going way too fast for that.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5642886/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7988561/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7670332/
[1] https://everytownresearch.org/graph/gun-death-vs-motor-vehic...
[2] https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/new-report-highlights-us-2...
I would rather take my chances on the road than on the sidewalk or on a bus, completely exposed and defenseless. Like a girl from certain bus video.
You mentioned yourself that you can even be hit by a car. Many such cases lately of people driving car into groups of people.
This world is mad and i think you are much crazier than me. It’s one thing to feel it and do something, anything in response. It’s another to pretend like nothing is happening.
This level of fear you describe is not a healthy or reasonable way to live your life and is not a very typical sentiment. A professional can help you figure out where these feelings are coming from and what you can do to manage them.
Sure, there are crazy and violent people out there, I don't deny that.
I know I was being somewhat of an urbanist zealot in my last comment, but for real...regardless of whether you prefer suburbs and spending more time in your car or the city and spending more time on foot, this isn't a healthy way for you to see the world in either case.
And that's before you get into tricycles.
What is the name of the company that built this?
> (probably, given recent AI advances) an incredible time to market
Looks like the answer is (at least for this older system), come in from both sides of the tyre with two separate arms, and have each of those arms have their own little wheels on, so as you move inwards it lifts up the tyre and just rolls your mini wheels a little bit. Clever.
The system in London Gatwick UK is done by Stanley Robotics from France (which was acquired by HL Robotics from South Korea in 2024), but it could be similar.
Edit: seems like they got bought out in 2024 by HL Robotics: https://en.hlrobotics.co.kr/
This kind of stuff has been the norm literally for decades in any major harbor. No AI BS needed.
If this thing could pick up my car from curbside at arrivals dropoff like a valet, but handle it robotically so there's no valet downside, it would be amazing.
agree that this would be way better if you just drove up in a queue and cars were taken away. one imagines the slow moving conveyors at amusement parks to get people closer to the ride's speed, tho given how long people take to park, get, take off the seat belt, find park, shut off the car, check their faces in the mirror, Find their cell, button their jacket, straighten up other stuff, find the rest of their shit, get out of the car, kiss their loved ones for 10 straight minutes, struggle with the tailgate, get their bats out, realize they forgot their phone, and finally head away from their car... probbably wouldn't work.
I see people take 5 minutes to get their car moving or get out at a grocery store. what they're doing I'll never guess. Car isn't even started for 3 minutes. When I first learned to drive my dad's hard and fast rule was to get the A/C running before anything else (other than insuring the car wouldn't move), the windows could be lowered with your other hand as a secondary.
Machines precisely like this, but manually piloted, are used in automotive plants themselves to move vehicles that fail end-of-line test, had an assembly mishap affecting the powertrain, or otherwise need to be shuffled around when they're not able to move under their own power. As long as it has tires, it can be moved this way.
Stringo™ and DJ CarCaddy™ are some popular brands, if you want to see more of how this type of lift works.
The parking buildings were built when cars were smaller than small cars today, and as the passenger count increased, so did the need for more spots, in a 0 sum game. They just split the cake in smaller slices.