The United States is notoriously car-dependent: 92% of households have access to a car, but only 55% have viable public transit options.
Those statistics underscore how vehicles shaped norms and dictated urban planning — but a post on an anti-car subreddit evidenced how stifling American "car culture" has become.
"I got the cops called on me for walking," the original post's title stated.
Reddit post titles occasionally belie their contents; claims like this can signal a misleading omission by the poster.
Not here, though.
The user explained that her pediatrician was "a 45-minute walk" from their home. Anticipating rain, she packed weather-appropriate clothing and bundled her toddler into a stroller. On the way back, however, the woman was "pulled over" by the chief of police in her small Georgia city.
"He asked where I'd been, where I was going, and told me that they'd had a call from a 'concerned citizen' regarding a woman walking with her young child in the storms. Keep in mind, it HAS NOT rained yet," she continued.
Immediately, the poster's story got even more infuriating — she added that the bizarre traffic stop marked the third time in five years she'd been stopped by police for the highly suspicious behavior of walking short distances.
"It's been frustrating every time it's happened," she admitted.
On Oct. 1, the Natural Resources Defense Council noted that, despite high rates of car ownership, nearly 16 million Americans had no access to a car. A third lacked "reliable" access to a car amid broadly poor public transportation options.
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Over an hour a day 😭 Public transportation isn't just about getting to work; a British study showed that increasing access to services like bus routes reduced social isolation, and researchers observed a 12% decrease in depressive symptoms.
Another recent study linked time spent driving, such as a daily commute, to higher rates of depression and divorce, lower sleep quality, and poorer mental health overall.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, transportation is the source of "the largest portion (28%)" of planet-warming pollution in the U.S., with 57% of that pollution attributed to "light-duty vehicles," also known as "cars."
Treating pedestrians as presumptive criminals is surprisingly not uncommon, but Redditors were enraged on the poster's behalf.
"The call from a concerned citizen is b*******. The cop just lied to interject themselves," one replied.
Another advised the original poster to contact their local lawmakers. "I would complain to your local elected officials. They spent money on all that walking infrastructure, and the cops are harassing people for using it?" they wrote.
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