I neither know nor care if it´s legal since i usually leave it open or actually left open since now i live in a place where the door slames shut automatically and can´t be opened from the outside without the key.Rogue 9 wrote: I regularly leave my door unlocked with no fear of burglary or anything else, and would do the same with my car if I had one. From conversations with Dahak, I got the understanding that this is not only unwise in Germany; it's actually illegal. Seems we're not the only ones scared shitless.
Anyway, i´m somehow getting the impression that you´re talking about locking the door when you´re inside?
Also the whole security issiue isn´t that big here, that´s at least what i gather from several visits to the US. Safty even comes up in regular conversations, there are stupid safty disclaimers on every single thing you can imagine, like in mirrors in cars, people don´t (or can´t) go to certain places because of safty, and so on.
Gated Communities are unheard of here and burglar alarms are installed in the vast minority of places.
Mind you, i´m not saying that it´s perfect here. I just read with worries and annoyance that the sale of burglar alarms went up.
It´s not really relevant if it´s not there for political reasons or economical reasons or any other reasons. The problem is, that it´s not there.As for public transportation, it's simply impractical over the vast expanses of rural land it would have to cover. Public transportation is grand in densely populated areas, but most parts of the United States have a low population density relative to most of Europe. I would love to be able to catch a train to Evansville or Bloomington for a day, but there's not much of a way to make it work and be economical, at least if the trains/buses/what have you are to stop in small towns in between major cities. (I'm not arguing against mass transit; I think it would be an excellent alternative to highways full of individual cars, but that's one of the many, many reasons why it will take vast changes in the economy and infrastructure of the United States to make it ever happen.)
Then there are cities like LA which is a pretty dense area with a myriad of suburbs. Why aren´t these suburbs and the main city connected with a big network of trains, trams, busses, subways and all the other stuff that makes getting around town so easy? I honestly don´t get it but to be fair LA might be a very extreme place and i don´t know what it´s like in, say, Austin, Topeka or Phoenix.