Can confirm. I pedest, and it’s more useful for me to know how long it will take to get somewhere than how far away that somewhere is. One effects my time of departure, the other is just a fun fact.
We moved to Colorado and 10 miles takes me about 15 minutes to cross the city we’re in, 30 in traffic. Where we grew up 10 miles around the city was 1-2 hours regardless of time of day (except maybe 2am). The country is just way too diverse for distance to be nearly as meaningful at transit time.
Yeah I’m a tad confused at why it’s weird to measure by time. If I’m trying to get somewhere deep in the city vs on highway traffic the whole time vs something in between the two, the same distance will give you radically different times to traverse it.
It’s also useful to give other people time estimates. Isn’t it more useful to tell your boss that you’ll be 15 minutes late versus the distance away in miles or kilometers? How about when you’re a guest arriving at someone’s house? Isn’t it more logical to tell them you’re 30 minutes from arrival as opposed to giving them the exact distance away in km or mi, especially when they might not know whether you’re arriving from a high traffic area or not?
There is a lot you can criticize the US for and it would be totally valid. This one is bizarre and unwarranted.
I didn’t mean to criticize anything, only to illustrate the difference c:
Btw Europeans also use minutes for most of the situations you mentioned. The difference is only really obvious for fixed distances like “I live X minutes from my family” vs “I live X km from my family”
That’s… what Americans do. I live about 1500 miles from my parents, and only use time as a measurement if I’m planning to drive that far, mainly in days.
It’s three hours round turn, that means I stay over night and that means it’s something that takes all weekend. There is a very limited number of people that I am willing to spend that much time for
I ve got (close) family 140 miles away. I saw them 2nd time in my life (21) this year, and not because our families dont like each other, just mostly the distance.
IDK about NYC, man. I was there once and my initial impression was media lied about the traffic. There was no cars anywhere; but the sidewalks were crowded as fuck. 🤣
And every time I thought “screw all these people, I’m taking a cab” I’d tell them where I wanted to go and they were like “I’m not gonna take your money to go 2 blocks.”
I drove a lady home from a party in NYC at like midnight, and I said "Oh, it's only five miles that won't be bad"
It took an hour to get there and back. I wasn't really mad because she was cute and maybe into me but we could have walked that distance in the same amount of time.
I fairly often drive 50,000m/h, except on the autobahn. There I usually go about 120,000,000mm/h.
And if I stack 1000 1cm³ blocks of water, the resulting 10m high column has a volume of 1l, weighs 1kg and exerts 100kPa of pressure on its base. And to heat it by 1°C requires 1kcal, while 1N would accelerate it by 1m/s every second.
What I want to say is: Your point is stupid and your units are too.
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