As someone who has smelled both horse shit and car exhaust on many occasions, I’d choose horse shit any day. It just smells like old wet hay (because that’s what it essentially is).
As someone who also smelled both, but is a natural city dweller, and despite not liking cars all that much - I'd chose car exhaust any day. I mean, a nondescript warm gas that doesn't smell like anything - unless you're inhaling it straight from the tailpipe, or your country is 50 years behind on automotive health standards - versus literally horse shit that just sits there (ugh) and stinks up the whole street in a 50+ meter radius, not to mention being a low-key biohazard (like all shit)? You'd seriously choose the latter?
Where I’m from, exhaust gas creates a phenomenon called smog that can make the air toxic. In environments that were supposed to be designed for humans to live in.
One day, as I was walking to the local grocery store while choking in said gases, I heard a guy say this to his kid: “Quick, let’s get into the car because the air’s horrible”. Can you appreciate how surreal and fucked up this is, that people can just pull up somewhere in their rolling couches, pump stinky toxic shit into the air, and then they, the people who do that, get to be protected from it while pedestrians and cyclists have to breathe it all in?
So yes, over choking in fumes that will probably give you cancer, I absolutely would choose horse manure that might be a biohazard if you rub your face in it but is otherwise completely harmless. Luckily though, this is all a false dichotomy thanks to the invention of the so-called bicycle.
We have smog too here, in Poland. Or so people say. I must be immune, because I never feel like I've experienced it.
I don't think you appreciate the scale we're talking about. If you replaced all cars with horses now, we'd be quite literally drowning in horse manure. Nothing resembling modernity is possible with horses being the primary mode of transportation. Or bicycles, for that matter.
> Luckily though, this is all a false dichotomy thanks to the invention of the so-called bicycle.
Let me know when bicycles can deliver food to cities or move heavy construction equipment.
> Can you appreciate how surreal and fucked up this is, that people can just pull up somewhere in their rolling couches, pump stinky toxic shit into the air, and then they, the people who do that, get to be protected from it while pedestrians and cyclists have to breathe it all in?
Not nice, but it's just an usual case of people reinforcing the problem by trying to shield themselves from it. Tragedy of the commons.
> Nothing resembling modernity is possible with horses being the primary mode of transportation. Or bicycles, for that matter.
Amsterdam has somehow managed to solve it (with bikes, not horses). I think the biggest blocker is people unwilling to give up their unhealthy lifestyles. But there must be a way out of that. Amsterdam used to be a car-centric city too.
> Let me know when bicycles can deliver food to cities
They’re already doing that in Hungary, I thought this was commonplace everywhere.
I do admit that cars have many valid use cases, but everyday personal transportation is rarely one of them. They are massively overused. Most of the problems cars solve were caused by cars to begin with, and most of the problems caused by cars are exacerbated by cars instead of being solved by them. It’s a negative spiral.
