Mumbai, India. Six grocery stores, five pharmacies, two clinics, and multiple cafes and restaurants within a 3-minute bike ride from where I live. A full-fledged mall, a hospital, a 7-Eleven convenience store, and an upcoming metro station 5 minutes away, a major discount department store, a shopping complex, and the train station 10min away (by bike).

That’s on top of the fact that there are multiple Instacart-style app-based delivery services that’ll bring groceries to you, so you don’t even have to get out of the house if you don’t want to. (I steer clear of those because they grossly underpay their low-level employees, but they’re there if you really need something in a pinch)

I live a solid 25-30 km outside the city center. Not once have I felt the need for a car in my eight years living here, even for longer distances.

Sure, provided they show they want to make changes to the way they do things – at the very least by not actively fighting tooth and nail against systemic measures that could free them of that addiction.

If you don’t have the money for it then thats fine. Times can be tough, I get it.

Is that the entire extent of your consideration, or do you have an actual suggestion for a systemic solution for poor people who find themselves in this situation?

Japan has accessible grocery stores and department stores just about everywhere. That makes it a lot easier to just get what you need and take it home because of how easy it to get to and from the store. If the load is something you can’t carry by yourself most stores offer a delivery service.

This situation happened at a high-density gathering point (a grocery store) in a major city (Columbus, Ohio.) The people in the story didn’t break down by the side of some lonely highway passing through the desert with no signs of civilization for a hundred kilometers either way. I am therefore speaking of systemic failures in major cities that render people in major cities stuck like this.

That said, I’ve been to (and briefly lived in) multiple tiny rural farming villages in the middle of nowhere in India that still had a bus stop and/or a train station within walking distance. When that isn’t the case there are minivans or even livestock carts that get people to where they need to be going (those count as public transport too.) Public transit is literally how people (and their groceries) get around in the heartland. Y’all bring up this point of how not everyone lives in cities every single time – we know. Americans aren’t the only ones who live on farms or out of the way. We do, too, and we get by just fine without cars.

None of that nonsense. Implementing actual, physical traffic-calming infrastructure is where it’s at. And bollards. Lots of bollards.

Asphalt has less heat retention capability than sidewalk bricks. The asphalt is venting more of its heat into the surroundings than the bricks are, which is why it’s cooler.

There’s also very little traffic on his side of the street – you’ll notice there are almost no cars on that side, so it’s more than likely he had ample time to get a temperature read on the asphalt before a car came along

If you have the sense to get a cargo bike you almost certainly have the good sense to have a patch kit and a pump on hand for exactly that scenario. Also fixing a flat on a bike is orders of magnitude easier than fixing one on a car

I did, it was a lovely little story about how the kid thought OP was a lot younger than she actually is, I think

Ah yes, the inevitable “I have no suggestions, but what if your suggestion doesn’t work???” scenario begins

Sure. It’s definitely that, and not that most North American cities are designed expressly to force you to drive even if you want a single cup of coffee or a sandwich or something.

Surprisingly carbrained for a community called fuckcars, this place

It’s primarily an argument to not cut down trees that are already there just so you can build another fucking parking lot or something

My point is that this entire situation is a massive systemic failure. You shouldn’t have to find yourself in a situation where your car breaking down means you’re stuck at the grocery store with no way to get home unless someone deigns to come and get you – hell, you shouldn’t even need to drive to get groceries, any well-designed city would have multiple grocery stores within a few blocks regardless of where you live, and a dense public transit network and/or cycling infrastructure so you can get to the ones that are farther away.

Doesn’t an AAA membership cost money and have limits on how often you can use it each year

Uber exists. They could have easily spun up the app and called for a ride.

Clearly a single mom with two kids who can’t afford the upkeep on her car doesn’t have the money to spend on an Uber ride, or she would’ve done that already.

The bus network in and around Columbus, Ohio (which is most likely where this happened, based on OOP’s location) also doesn’t seem to be all that great – for all you know the nearest bus stop to the grocery store or to their house may well be kilometers away

Concrete and dark-colored metal surfaces can absolutely reach those temperatures after a few hours of direct sunlight

Dr. Hannah Fry made a short video about this recently – this kind of heat retention is why London Underground stations are so bloody hot, because the clay tiles lining the underground tunnels have absorbed heat from trains braking day in and day out and are constantly releasing excess heat into the air at the stations

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…that is genuinely bad planning, why would they not route the lane through somewhere there aren’t trees, like, say next to the trees?