At Octopus Energy, I think we’ve made negative prices available to retail customers (at least in the UK, not sure about the other countries we’re retailing in).
People getting paid to charge their cars because the grid has a surplus of (probably green) energy.
It's not a law enforcement issue, it's a city planning issue.
The practical solution is to reallocate usage of the street to prioritize all modes of transport. i.e. Take a car lane and replace it with proper 2-way concrete barriered bike lane.
They're on the sidewalks because they don't feel safe riding in the street, and who would with huge trucks blowing past you at high rates of speed. But if you give them some infrastructure and someplace safe to ride, they won't be forced to dive through pedestrians on the sidewalk.
It depends on the level of rain, but there are affordable solutions to cycling in the rain to prevent you from getting drenched. I use the Rover cycling poncho from Cleverhoods to keep dry. It's mostly a regular poncho, but it has thumb straps you can strap on your handlebars and your legs are covered.
My son, who rides in a seat on the back, has a rain cover that provides shade when it's not raining and that we can zip an enclosure onto when it is to keep him completely dry.
If it's a heavy rain and we can't wait it out we'll take the car. But we mostly use our e-bikes as it's easier/quicker/more fun.
The Japanese country side isn't too different than the US. Sure there's trains, but not an extensive network ala Tokyo, and you drive everywhere.
The way they handle the issue is "daikou taxi", which is a service from the taxi providers. If you've been drinking, you call them, they send a taxi with 2 drivers. You get in the taxi, and the other driver drives your car home.
Introducing a service like this would help reduce DUIs, I think. Having stricter laws about also helps avoid people making the decision to drive somewhere, where they know they're going to drink, in the first place. Instead they may opt to take a cab, find a designated driver etc, drink closer to home etc..
Japan used to have a bad drunk driving problem until they changed the laws to be mostly zero tolerance. If your caught it's an automatic 90-day suspension of your license. Over 0.25mg and it could be up to 2 years. That's excluding potential fines and imprisonment. Oh, and any adults in the car and or the person who owns the car can also be held liable.
Technical monitoring is one solution. Making you calculate if driving is potentially worth, at a minimum 3-months of no driving, quickly makes you decide it's not worth the risk is another. That said, you'd think potentially running someone over would be enough risk for to avoid driving under the influence, but it's obviously not.
Off topic from the main thread, but Travel map looks really good. Reminds me of all the travel blogs I used to read when I was in high school / college dreaming about getting out and exploring the world. Great work!
People getting paid to charge their cars because the grid has a surplus of (probably green) energy.