In the US every gas pump I've seen (I have not check the majority of states, but still a good sample) has a sticker on it stating inspections and who runs the state department that inspects them. Usually it is a yearly inspection (at least according to the sticker, maybe they do it more often I don't know)
Not just gas pumps, but any measuring device used to determine the price of a metered product. The scales at the register at supermarkets also have calibration stickers in my state.
Now that you mention it, I've seen them at some grocery stores - but generally not in a place I'd be looking unlike gas pumps where is is right next to the price and so you won't miss it.
Writing down a password is a great option. However you need to keep that paper in a secure location. Put it in your wallet and treat it like a $100 bill - don't paste it to a monitor or under the keyboard.
A password manager is better for most things, but you need to unlock the password manager somehow.
they almost never send them where I live. Probably because the first one was sent at 2am, next morning the news reported the kid was found - safe with the parent who had legal custody the whole time.
There was a long time between those cars and the modern electric car where the only thing electric was "golf carts" (not general purpose cars), or homemade conversions. The EV1 was the first commercial car in the memory of most people alive today. The 1900s ones were fun/interesting historical things, but not practical.
Nobody in human rights would allow that. Take away the car and people cannot live.
The above is sadly serious. It is almost impossible to find a job and a house you can afford in walking distance of each other, demanding there be things like grocery shopping as well make it not feasible for most people. Taking away someone's car is cruel and usual punishment that cannot be accepted.
> Take away the car and people cannot live. [...] It is almost impossible to find a job and a house you can afford in walking distance of each other,
As a Brazilian, that statement feels bizarre. Yeah, my job and my home are not in walking distance of each other. I simply take the bus. Sure, some jobs are not within reach of the bus (or the ferry, or the metro, or the light tram, etc), and some jobs need a car (for instance, it would be hard for a HVAC technician to take all their equipment on a bus), but saying it's "almost impossible" to find a job?
> demanding there be things like grocery shopping as well make it not feasible for most people.
That also sounds bizarre to my ears. Most places I've known have small grocery shopping places on nearly every corner. You just have to walk.
Unfortunately that just isn't true in large parts of the US. Many cities have no public transit, and no accessible grocery stores.
Being able to live car free is pretty much limited to (expensive) major cities and some (expensive) mid-sized college towns.
The city of about 50,000 I'm from not only has no public transit and limited sidewalks, it doesn't even have crosswalks across the two main 6-lane roads that divide the city, so you can't safely walk more than about a mile even if you wanted to.
Even in cities with public transit often it is so bad that isn't reasonable to expect someone to use it. Reasonable transit must run 24x7/365, at least every half an hour. Miss a day and someone can't get someplace they might want to. More than half an hour between bus/trains and it isn't reasonable. Miss the over night - maybe you can do this if you have taxi service for the same price (which might be cheaper overall for the few people who want to ride at 3am). Half hour is the minimum, it is possible to plan your life around that level of service and not be impacted too badly, but you will hate it (particularly when the line is a little longer than you expected: you miss your bus and so your ice cream melts by the time the next comes)
Not just the US, it's like that everywhere. Private transport will always be necessary as people need to go on routes with low demand. Only counterexample I can think of is Singapore, which has a vast network of buses and trains that go to everywhere.
Even in cities with public transit cars have a very high mode share in rich countries. Some of it is 'trades' that need to carry tools and parts with them, but a lot could take transit but don't for unknown reasons
"Being able to live car free is pretty much limited to (expensive) major cities and some (expensive) mid-sized college towns"
I live in the UK (hardly a bastion of public transport) in a town of under 10k, and have a car. The main requirement for a car is to take my youngest to Drama club in the next town where it finishes at 9pm, well after buses have stopped. There is a drama club in the town, but as we only just moved we didn't want to move him. Likewise we're driving him to his old school until the end of July as he'll move school then.
I used to live in a village of 300 people, and sure you need a car there.
Sure it was nice to drive the 4 miles to the garden centre at the weekend rather than take the hourly bus, but it's not a requirement.
For a town of 10,000 people, let alone 50,000, to say you can't live car free is nonsense.
Of course America is different. Their towns are far less dense, they don't even have "sidewalks", they are consciously built so you have to drive everywhere, but that's unique to the time American towns were built.
So again, what towns in Europe with a population of 50,000 have no public transport.
As an American I can report there are sidewalks nearly everywhere. They are used for exercise only: getting anywhere is frusterating but if you just need to run (or walk the dog) they are great.
Where I live I would half to walk about a half day to get to the nearest place that sells any kind of food and back, which is a 7/11 gas station. To get to a real grocery store and return would require a full day's travel on foot (just checked google maps, 4.5 hours one-way to the closest one). There is no public transportation option at all, the only buses are school buses until you get much closer to a major city. Driving is a necessity in such places.
I live in a well populated East Coast state, so it's not like I'm even really far out in the sticks too, there are many places which are even worse off in these regards.
There are no buses to take here, and the distances are looooong. Your job or grocery store could be 15 miles away, and that's in an urban-ish area. Rural, it's much worse.
> It is almost impossible to find a job and a house you can afford in walking distance of each other, demanding there be things like grocery shopping as well make it not feasible for most people
This is exactly what the parent meant by designing the country in a 'car-brained' fashion. It's not true in many/most other countries.
Europe may not drive as much as America, but it's still about half. Cars are popular worldwide for a reason, and it is not American corporations magically convincing everyone how useful they are.
It's also entirely moot, as we're not redesigning the country in the short term to cut down on DUIs.
Yeah, but there's a big difference between having a car because you can afford it and it's often more convenient, and it being completely impractical to not have one. Or even to go have a beer without having to drive home.
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