Americans and Walking

[AlphaBravo]

i just had my GCSE english retake exam  :( any way to get to the point there was some article on americans and walking. " the average american walks only 75 miles a year" Thats 1.4 miles a week or only 200 meters a day. and that this guy invited his neighbours over to dinner and they DROVE less than 100 feet.  ???


LMAO


Craig


This is not meant to insult anyone

[ozzy72]

Craig you should read Bill Bryson "A Walk In The Woods" it really puts it in perspective!
A lot of towns in the US don't even have paths/pavements for people they are purely car-orientated. Our neighbours in California used to drive round for dinner, and they lived next door to us

[Woodlouse2002]

My geography teacher lives at the boarding house on the school grounds and he still drives to school.

[Felix/FFDS]

It's a different mentality.  When I've visited the core of a large city (ex. New York), people walk.   It's a lot faster than taking a taxi (or horrors, giving up a prized parking spot).  In suburbia, "convenient" shops, etc are several miles away (the closest "convenience store"  is over a mile away from my house)  and more often than not, across one or two major streets/roads.  Walking then becomes a risky proposition.

Having said that, I've recently taken up force-walking as an exercise, (force-walking because I don't like to do it, but I must) a specific mile every night at the local gym.

[pete]

& the irony is this - everywhere you go in the US (except certain banjo twanging townlets where Bubba & his sisters are very well acquainted )  you will see more people out walking for exercise than anywhere I've been in the world ......

[Felix/FFDS]

[quote]& the irony is this - everywhere you go in the US (except certain banjo twanging townlets where Bubba & his sisters are very well acquainted )

[ATI_7500]

Probably the same with bikes.

See it this way: If you walked as a means of transportation, you wouldn't have to walk for an excercise, thus having more time for FS and stuff.

[SilverFox441]

Irony is seeing people load up the car so they can go somewhere for a walk.

[Souichiro]

Irony is: Driving a Hummer everywhere you go and then the only time you walk you get run over by a Mini

[ozzy72]

So we're agree that American small town planners should be introduced to their feet then (even if we have to use a rope to pull their bellies in). That seems to be a concensus

[BFMF]

There's a town right outside of Fort Leonard Wood that I hated because it seems that it was built with the cab companies in mind. The town had several highways and a couple interstates through it, making it impossible to walk from place to place, and forcing us to spend a lot of money on cab fares if we wanted to go somewhere

[H]

I found a 12-mile walk to the town hall quite challenging and, while at a stop on my bicycle year before last, I got my shins scarred while avoiding intersection traffic cutting close to the corner. A report recently came out that a poll was taken of licensed drivers: a great many didn't know that pedestrians had the right-of-way; some didn't even know they had the right-of-way at a crosswalk ! Unfortunately for the pedestrians, one needn't score a 100% on the driving exam so testees can get that one wrong before hitting the road (and whatever is on *or near* it).
*sorry, this needed the modification.

[Mozz]

Yeah, the article in the exam was from Bill Bryson's book. Quite scary though, I liked the 'do you take a light aircraft to the supermarket' joke  ;D.

[Craig.]

i wont bother with my drive thru story again. you all know it