What it's Like Living Low Vision & Car-Free in the U.S. (Seattle)

Thank you.

I also live in Seattle and don’t drive. This is the perfect thing to send to friends and family to help them understand what it is like. Thank you so much for this video, and for the call to action!

Great channel - subscribed. I was born in London, UK, and had no money to learn to drive or buy a car. I'm now 58, and have never learned to drive. Now live in Melbourne, where there are trams etc. Not driving saved me serious money, and I was able to pack up full time work at 50. I was once offered a job in Pheonix which paid 6 figure money. I turned it down at the interview as the whole place was built for cars. What a crap hole! I'm sure US cities are built to encourage driving, which keeps everyone broke (because you have to own a car) and subservient.

Being from Olympia, and not learning to drive till I was 25. I can relate with this video in a lot of ways.

Always felt like Seattle was missing a good subway/metro.

thank you for making this. I live in West Virginia with nystagmus and low vision similar to you, and I cannot drive. it is hell. I'm trying to find somewhere in the US where I can just live, and Seattle has been at the top of the list, so it's great to hear your perspective!

Seattle is usually towards to top of lists of walkable cities and good places for blind/low vision to live. So, this is not a good news for me. Guess I'll keep looking for a good place to retire. 😞

I ride a bicycle by choice in the US(florida) and it’s ridiculous the lack of infrastructure and the stigma associated for riding a bicycle. It’s sad and pathetic.

Those reckless buildings should have known to be wearing their helmets!!!

Also, the 15 minute neighborhoods are generally completely unaffordable BECAUSE they are howlingly popular. People want to live in these places

Non-Seattleite here. What was the outcome of the budget meetings?

cities in america and canada are designed by criminals, all this car supremacy is absolutely a crime against all people in favor of drivers and car-oil corporation. those city officials should be jailed for this

I hear you and this was very inspiring to me to do more

We have a lot in common! I also have nystagmus and hadn’t been able to drive for my 30 years of life but recently got an eye test where I met the bare minimum 😂

While I feel lucky I also feel it may not be best to rely on driving as a consistent transportation source. I’m living in Tacoma now, but may relocate up there for work due to office mandates…..this video scares me a bit 🫣

I have never related more to a video, in my life. I am not exaggerating. My shift to Canada, and the reduced options, of going anywhere on busses or other public transport, was extremely frustrating, because given student life is so hectic, time is essential. The extreme lack of sidewalks is unprecedented from my experience as an Indian. Walking is how I got myself around. I do not know how to drive a car, neither can I afford one. Thus, knowing a world before that had options for mobility, versus interacting with a world where mobility is highly restricted, makes me feel very debilitated as an individual. Not to forget the extreme amount of shame that drives, for not owning a car.

Man I have lived in about 5 major US cities and Seattle takes the cake for worst Pedestrians ever! I don’t want to call them spoiled rich people because they’re not. But the entitlement of them walking while the driver has a green light . In NY or California we would beat you down ! But in Seattle people are walking and texting and boom they get hit! I worked in Cap hill and I felt like everyday some one on a bike or pedestrian was hit.

Hey I live in downtown seattle and sure, there’s bike lanes but the priority is very much still car traffic. Riding a bike is scary and dangerous at best.

I think this is one of the reasons why 16 year old children can get a car.

I loved this video. Really interesting perspective, thanks Devin.

cant afford cars nowadays

I'm legally blind and live in suburban upstate New York. I live alone in an apartment that is not considered at a central location. My parents used to scold me for taking expensive taxis everywhere, until I showed them the 6 feet of snowbanks covering the majority of sidewalks in my area during the winters. I've almost been hit multiple times by cars when I'm just simply trying to cross a road. It's tough, and the city council could not care less.

Having been both carless on First Hill, Seattle for years and also a car owner in Seattle several times (RPZ zones 7 and 10), these experiences are very accurate. It was a 1-mile urban hike to the nearest QFC, using a backpack as a grocery bag. Or one of many convenience stores (and the new Whole Foods) that were closer but more expensive. It's hard to find streets in most Seattle neighborhoods without sidewalks, and a frequent joy was urban hiking, just wandering through the city for miles and miles without a particular destination. Pike Place Pigs, Seattle Center, Fremont Troll, Gasworks, UW, Cal Anderson can all be reached if your legs don't get tired.

Most bus routes take about 1 hour, so if you have to take 3 buses to get somewhere it will probably take around 3 hours - and yes a lot of these are 25 to 45 minute drives by car. Downtown Bellevue is a joy by comparison, and has entirely different sections of the city that are pro and anti car. Like car-hostile 6th Ave, with the transit station and pedestrian paths into the City Center, Bravern, and Collection - compared to 8th Ave, whose job it is to funnel cars from I-405 to the Collection and back.

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As a driver, traffic is nightmarish. Sometimes on 4th you'd sit through a red light, green light no motion, red light, green light move 1 foot, red light, green light finally move 1 block, repeat. At 4 way stops on Capitol Hill, you not only have to stop normally before entering for traffic and pedestrians, but also have to stop again for any pedestrians who have walked into the crosswalk while you were moving through the intersection - not only are these people entering the intersection while you have the right of way, but they're oblivious to your vehicle mere feet away from them.

Parking is nightmarish, and most people I know avoid any event in Seattle's city limits for this reason. There are 4 parking systems, and most streets have at least 2. RPZ, meter, Pay by Phone, and sometimes free parking. Often a street will have RPZ on one side and Pay by Phone on the other, with a couple spots at the end that are No Parking Between 8a-5p M-F Excluding Holidays. RPZ permits are cheap because they're almost worthless, and you'll usually park blocks away from your car. Or you can pay the monthly $200+ and mandatory 12% tax for a parking garage spot, as mandated by most insurance policies.

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Compared to somewhere like Wilbur, WA (population ~800) where parking is easy to find and most roads don't have sidewalks, traffic, nor buses, it's a different experience. The grocery store is still only a mile away.

The lightrail is awesome. When I was 14, I got my first ORCA card and used it to take Tukwila International Boulevard Station to Westlake. I got my driver's license at 16, and still took the lightrail and metro everywhere.

I'm now twenty, and since I enrolled at UW, their student ID cards also serve as a subsidized ORCA card--awesome. I unfortunately don't live in Seattle anymore, and instead a car-dependent neighborhood where I have to drive everywhere. It sucks.

I was Seattle born, but lived in Tacoma the majority of my life and I don't drive (not for any health reason its more money and environment for me) so I'm familiar with the struggle of living without a car or a decent public transit system.
I've wanted to live in Seattle most of my life simply because its really one of the only places I could realistically live without a car (even if its limited to those "15 minute neighborhoods") without leaving my home state.

I’m late to the party, but I am (likely, I am afraid to get an official diagnosis due to ableism and am psyching myself up to ask my therapist) autistic. I have terrible depth perception and difficulty navigating through space. I also have terrible panic attacks and will shut down if something happens on the road that I am not prepared for. I am not fit to drive but still forced to because I live in Mississippi. It is not practical for me to walk or bike anywhere because the only way to a place that would allow me to do so is… a terrible 2 lane road with no bike lane or real walking path + crossing an incredibly busy road.

It causes me a lot of pain. Even though my body is able to drive, my mind cannot handle the pressure.

Why did you move back? Was it out of neccesity? Otherwise I can't think of anything that would compel me to move back from europe to america.

My dad was legally blind and it led to us having a pretty awful life growing up since my mom couldn't drive either and in a lot of towns we lived in there wasn't transit. He rode to work on a bike but honestly it wasn't safe but not much choice but it got better as me and my brother got old enough to move about on our own.

Living in the us is wonderful but this whole country is built on the assumption you can drive which sucks.

I'm legally blind myself and trying to find a walkable city I can move to. Unfortunately these places are highly desired because there's only a handful of cities that fit this criteria in the US. As a result they are exponentially more expensive to live in.

This is explained and presented very well. Living in the US and not being able to drive is hard when you’re in a rural area, too. I was lucky to bike around in a city before I moved, but it was extremely dangerous. I biked on the side of the highway where people would pull over or nearly hit me. Once you leave a city, you have nothing reliable and bikes are out of the question (and so is walking) far enough out that it’s 10 miles to even get to work, and that work is in a run down town quite literally only built for cars with rare sidewalks. It’s crazy. Public transport would change my life and give so much autonomy back to me. I hope these things change. For now I’ll have to rely on others for transport. Even though I’m not staying in the US for this reason and in the future will leave, hopefully voting will help the future and those who struggle as I do too.

I’m a 52 years old European an never felt the need to have a drivers license.

I also am unable to drive, not because of my vision, though that is also bad, but because I was born with an auto-immune disorder that causes me to be a high risk of seizures. There are more of us than you think and the US is not built for us, sadly. I lived in Tokyo for school and work for 6 years and it is crazy to see the difference when I moved back to the states. Tokyo is great for walkability, but even rural Japan is more walkable than many major US cities.

This is a really good evaluation, I live near Seattle (downtown Issaquah) and love walking everywhere. I recall there being a good recent video about how the automobile industry lobbies cities in the US to favor their industry. Also I love the stab at Cap Hill being an affordable walkable neighborhood.

46 years old and I'm still absolutely amazed that tax money goes into something that caters to something that sits in a driveway or parking spot for 99% of the day. I mean... it's insane that my taxes go towards programs that basically allow people to leave their personal belongings (car) just laying around on the side of the road. If you don't think that's insane, go take everything else you own and set it on the side of the road then tell the city that they should be the one to pay for your spot where you left your crap. I shouldn't have to pay more in life because you're too lazy to walk a few blocks. I shouldn't have to pay more because because you bought something that you don't have the room for. I mean, hell, I guess I can't expect too much from a country that spends more on adding lanes to stroads (which doesn't actually improve anything) than it does on its own citizen's health.

Wow you lived in a suburb with busses? That is substantially better than the suburbs I've known in the US, and I am a city guy that has lived car-free almost my whole life, until getting stuck in a shit suburb only this year. The deeper you get into the devastation of car-consumed infrastructure, the more you question if we should have built for cars at all.

Childhood sheltering is one of the most devastating consequences of all I'd say. As a youth counselor one of the primary starting points for youth independence is to get out and get to a city. If you spend any time walking or biking around in a real American suburb, it becomes clear it's a wasteland. People who live in their cars all the time seem literally dissociated, like they can't connect with this. And the only "lesson" they learn is to cling to their cars for dear life. Always trying to escape as fast as possible, only to return every day.

When I lived in the Twin Cities it was fantastic, though you could go more radically car-free, it was still exponentially better than being in a shit suburb in Texas now. The latter almost left me destitute. And suburbanites are still convinced it's cheaper to live there than the city. This is not only flat out false, living in the suburbs is almost impossible unless you live a very materialistic and expensive lifestyle.

The vast majority of North Americans living outside of extremely dense urban centers drive cars. Thus, it makes sense for transportation to take this into account. I am disabled and unable to walk for more than half a city block. Even if public transport is available, I would not be able to access it.

It's so gross to see how these cities plan their infastructure, like they don't try at all.

Autonomy! Yes, spot on. People complain about younger generations not getting driver's licenses bc it signals dependence, but to me cars are an isolation trap. On the other hand, walkable neighbourhoods make me feel like I can go anywhere anytime.

This must be rough. Disabled and elderly people are so much less visible in the U.S. because you need a car to get around!

us government be like: you're poor, old and/or disabled? well, sucks to be you!

Seattle is a weird city for sure. It's built upon bad ideas that we just keep sticking with despite knowing how bad they are bc, god damn, we're persistent. We need to start collectively looking at the way this city functions and start generating good ideas to solve issue like these. One thing that really bothers me about going down to Seattle is the driving, especially the Union St exit. And we also need to fix the homelessness too

Takes me an hour and 15 minutes by bus to go ~12 miles in Seattle. This is with convenient bus stops that don't require more than a few blocks of walking and only 1 transfer.

Next time please choose less annoying boinky sounding music during your dialogue and presentations, no sub for you

Roads and streets built for higher speed without providing seperated bike lanes and sidewalks is criminal. It's unsafe for literally everyone. I don't understand how north america builds like this. I live in switzerland and the most car friendly city here, Zürich, has sidewalks everywhere and decent bike infrastructure (still shit for europe standard).

you should come back to paris post 2020, the walkability & bikability as improved greatly, with a lot of trafic lane reclaimed.

I agree completely !!! with your point about how there is too high a speed limit on city streets. I drive but I can’t drive on highway‘s since it stresses to me too much and I’ll so I don’t drive in cities that I’m not familiar with such as large cities.

Also something I noticed as a walker if I have a crosswalk with a signal I can walk plus there’s six lanes for me to cross but there’s still enough time on the signal, it’s often very unsafe for me because that the ALLOW cars to turn RIGHT I almost got hit one time because of a car turning right and they weren’t looking or expecting that people would cross on the crosswalk apparently plus they were going over the speed limit which strangely enough was I think it was 40 mph and often people go to 10 miles over what is allowed anyway.

I recently graduated college and moved to a town outside Portland OR. Ive never owned a car and living in my college town i never really needed to because college towns are built with humans in mind and not just cars, even in my Georgia college town. But now i feel stuck with having to buy a car if i want to get or find a job. It’s insane to me how many job postings require people to pay thousands out of pocket to have a personal vehicle.

I really appreciated hearing your perspective, I hadn’t thought about how difficult it is for people who cannot drive at all. I have been fortunate that I have a partner who let’s me use his car sometimes. I really hope that our infrastructure changes in this country because it shouldn’t be a deadly affair to move around outside a car.

All city planners across North America are to blame this is not just a Seattle problem

Thank you for making this video, Devin. This hits close to home because I also moved to Seattle seven years ago and never owned a car since then. I was also low vision due to some idiopathic disease and lived in the Central District. My feet and ability to run both liberated and confined me in a single stroke. On the dense streets downtown, I could outpace cars. Almost everywhere else was a desert, turning short trips into bizarre adventures. Traversing SoDo on foot verges on the surreal as you cross the unremarkable slabs of asphalt where other pedestrians die to collisions. It's my dream that someday we can share a single, interconnected arterial system connecting pathways like the Burke Gilman, Elliot Bay, and Ship Canal trails. I want to see the city increasing vehicular resistance where roads cross these paths. For example, by keeping these paths at grade - an inconvenient speed bump for cars and huge improvement for people with personal mobility devices.